The clerk attended his desk and counter at the intersection of two great themes of modern historical experience: the development of a market economy and of a society governed from below. Who better illustrates the daily practice and production of this modernity than someone of no particular account assigned with overseeing all the new buying and selling? In Accounting for Capitalism, Michael Zakim has written their story, a social history of capital that seeks to explain how the “bottom line” became a synonym for truth in an age shorn of absolutes, grafted onto our very sense of reason and trust. This is a big story, told through an ostensibly marginal event: the birth of a class of “merchant clerks” in the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. The personal trajectory of these young men from farm to metropolis, homestead to boarding house, and, most significantly, from growing things to selling them exemplified the enormous social effort required to domesticate the profit motive and turn it into the practical foundation of civic life. As Zakim reveals in his highly original study, there was nothing natural or preordained about the stunning ascendance of this capitalism and its radical transformation of the relationship between “Man and Mammon.”

This book gives readers an entry-level overview of what it is like to work in the accounting office of a TV show or film. Geared for newcomers to accounting, production, or both, it explains in moderate detail the daily life of the clerk in a production accounting office. The tone is playful and wry, less like a formal textbook and more like a personal meeting with a friendly expert. The book concentrates on production-specific tasks and responsibilities, such as breaking down time cards for background actors and ensuring each member of the film crew receives the correct tax forms, with brief primers throughout on accounting basics like working with purchase orders and accounts payable. When a reader has finished the book, they will have a solid understanding of the type of work involved in production accounting, what will be expected of them when they are just starting out, and what a long-term career in production accounting looks like. If they were unsure when they began reading, they should know whether or not this is a career they want to pursue, and they should feel prepared to seek out their first job in the field.So far, there are no books about production accounting on the market. Accounting in Hollywood is its own beast, and books on the basics of accounting in general will not prepare newcomers to the field for the specific demands of the job the way this book will.