The Agile Manager's Guide to Understanding Financial Statements

This is one really great book in an impressive series of publications. Everything you need to know to have a passing familiarity with accounting statements is presented in easy read and understand fashion. After reading this book, you can use and understand some of the more basic jargon of business, investment and finance.
As is the tradition with every great business book, the text ends with Chapter 7 (you know, of bankruptcy fame!). Each chapter presents a different aspect of financial statements, beginning with the income statement, the balance sheet, and the statement of cash flows, and integrates the three to demonstrate how they can be used for financial analysis, inventory tracking and allocating for depreciation. Each chapter starts by explaining the topic fully, and offers several examples of its use in actual business practice. Although the book is a slim volume, it packs a lot of information, being brief, to the point and insightful all at the same time. Additionally, its small size also means that it will not take up too much space on one's shelf of must-have and must-keep books.