Learn the 25 keys to unlocking the powerful and useful information buried in corporate financial statements, including understanding balance sheets and income statements, defining accrual accounting, and valuing costs of goods sold, inventory and cash flow:

Key 1. Accounting is not a four-letter word.
Key 2. Financial statements rely on fact, not possibility.
Key 3. What's hanging in the balance sheet?
Key 4. Take steps to understand the income statement.
Key 5. Matching and adjusting-the crux of accrual accounting.
Key 6. Who decides what financial statements contain?
Key 7. Where cash came from and where it went.
Key 8. Monetary matters need not be murky. Follow the cash.
Key 9. Keeping owner's claims straight.
Key 10. Don't ignore the fine print! Read the footnotes.
Key 11. What shapes a firm's financial reporting strategy?
Key 12. Financial reports are useful for both running and evaluating the company.
Key 13. Financial statements have trouble measuring future opportunities properly.
Key 14. You got the basics, so how are financial data used to compare one firm with another?
Key 15. Staying alive: analyzing financial data to measure the health and survivability of a firm.
Key 16. How great are the costs of financial distress?
Key 17. Estimating the cost of using up productive capacity: depreciation.
Key 18. Computing costs of goods sold, and valuing inventory.
Key 19. What do we have to pay? Accounting for taxes.
Key 20. Don't overlook long-term obligations: debt and leases.
Key 21. More long-term obligations: pensions and other benefits.
Key 22. Untangling the web of inter-corporate investments.
Key 23. Is my company global? Should I care?
Key 24. What I am buying if I purchase a foreign firm's stock?
Key 25. What are other sources of financial information?

Analyzing Financial Statements is part of The New York Times Pocket MBA Series, a reference series easily accessible to all businesspersons, from first-level managers to the executive suite. The 12-volume series is written by Ph.D.s who teach in the finest graduate business programs in the country, and edited by business editors from The New York Times. The structure of each volume presents an unparalleled synopsis of crucial principles of specific areas of business expertise.