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An annual report is a powerful and revealing document about a company's financial standing, and can offer the savvy reader substantial insight about where the company may be headed in the future. But to the untrained eye, the annual report may seem like walls of accounting technicalities surrounded by glossy photos and the upbeat "Message from the CEO."

Annual Reports 101 is a straightforward guide to reading the primary financial documents that make up the annual report, and then extracting more information—from the numbers themselves and from the often fluffy text—than some companies want the public to know. The book shows how to watch out for "red flags," decipher footnotes, and see past common practices that, while legal, may not give the most accurate picture. Readers of annual reports include potential investors and business partners, financial advisers, company employees, lenders, and many others whose stake in the success of a public company is crucial to their own. Annual Reports 101 gets past the PR machine to show the meaning behind the math.