The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations

Good bookkeeping makes for good government—but not for very long—according to this absorbing history of accounting in the public sphere. Historian and MacArthur fellow Soll (The Information Master) surveys public financial record keeping after the invention of double-entry accounting in 13th-century Tuscany, a breakthrough that made systematic analysis of profit and loss possible. The benefits for well-ordered, responsible government were felt wherever this innovation was embraced: medieval Italian city-states, 17th-century Holland, and 18th-century Britain all became economic and geopolitical powerhouses, he argues, thanks to well-kept government books. But his is even more a story of backsliding and failure, as corruption, spendthrift government, and factional intrigues perennially undermine the discipline of meticulous public accounting—and the state. Soll’s engaging narrative highlights both the political impact of accounting practices—a public audit of Louis XVI’s woeful state finances helped spark the French Revolution—and the advent of a “culture of accountability” as the bourgeois business classes rose to power; he explores the deep-seated religious and philosophical power of balanced-books metaphors in the West, from the Gospel of Matthew to Thoreau’s championing of the simple life. The result is a provocative, illuminating take on history that assigns humdrum accountants a central and dramatic role. Photos. (May)