Most of us are accustomed to thinking of accounting as a profession where people sit at desks and pour over columns of figures. But there is more to accounting than annual ledger books, as Stephen Zeff shows in Henry Rand Hatfield: Humanist, Scholar, and Accounting Educator (JAI Press, 2000). The fruit of meticulous research that spanned more than 30 years, Zeff’s critically acclaimed biography reveals the life and scholarship of Hatfield (1866–1945), long regarded as the “dean of accounting teachers everywhere.”
...........................................................................

“The quality of the biography and the scholarship Zeff presents in this book are impeccable,” said O. Finley Graves ’70, professor of accounting at Kansas State University and president of the Academy of Accounting Historians. “Through this book, he shows how values and other historical forces have influenced accounting thought. He has also brought Henry Rand Hatfield to life.”

Zeff, the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Accounting, began his research on Hatfield’s life in the 1960s at the encouragement of Maurice Moonitz, a former student of Hatfield and professor of accounting at the University of California, Berkeley. Zeff began poring over the extensive files of Hatfield’s correspondence, notes, and papers stored at the university and then proceeded to interview or correspond with many of Hatfield’s former colleagues and students.

The resulting volume not only has received rave reviews from accounting scholars throughout the world but earned Zeff his second Hourglass Award from the Academy of Accounting Historians. Zeff was previously honored with the first Hourglass Award in 1973 for Forging Accounting Principles in Five Countries: A History and an Analysis of Trends (Stipes Publishing Co., 1972). The Academy of Accounting Historians seeks to encourage research, publication, teaching, and personal interchanges in all phases of accounting history and its interrelation with business and economic history. Presented annually at the academy’s November research conference, the award recognizes an individual who has made a demonstrable and significant contribution to knowledge through research and publication in accounting history.

“The book is characteristic of the body of work Zeff has delivered throughout his entire career,” Graves said. “His work reflects how accounting is more than just adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing—that it is socially motivated and imbued with values.”

Zeff, who has taught at Rice since 1978, was editor of the Accounting Review, 1977–82, and was president of the American Accounting Association (AAA), 1985–86. In 1988, he received the AAA’s Outstanding Accounting Educator Award, and in 1999, the AAA’s International Accounting Section named him the recipient of its International Accounting Educator Award.

—Maileen Hamto