Black Hounds of Death

Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) was born and raised in rural Texas, the son of a pioneer physician. He began writing professionally at the age of fifteen and turned out dozens of tales of heroic and supernatural fantasy, featuring many memorable creations - including the character he is best remembered for: Conan of Cimmeria. These stories, mostly published in Weird Tales, won him a huge audience across the world and influenced a whole generation of writers, from Robert Jordan to Raymond E. Feist. Sadly, Howard killed himself in June 1936 when he learned that his beloved mother had fallen into a coma.

Mark Finn is a Clinical Professor of Accounting at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, having served on the Kellogg faculty since 1996. Prior to Kellogg, Professor Finn was on the faculty of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He has been affiliated with the Sasin School of Management, Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok, Thailand) since 2003 and the Birla Institute of Technology and Science's School of Management (Mumbai) since 2020. Professor Finn has also served as a visiting professor at the Indian School of Business (Hyderabad and Mohali) and Keio University (Hiyoshi, Japan). From 2001 to 2008 he was director of Kellogg's Global Initiatives in Management (GIM) program. He received a PhD from Cornell University and a BA with honors from Stanford University.

Professor Finn teaches core financial accounting and advanced classes in financial reporting, taxation, international accounting, and sustainability reporting. He received Kellogg's Chairs' Core Teaching Award in 1999. 2005, 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021 and the Indian School of Business's Teacher of the Year award in 2003, 2008, and 2009. Within the GIM program, he served as a faculty adviser to classes on China, Japan, India, and South Africa. His primary research interests are related to the quality and credibility of financial disclosures, especially in non-U.S. settings. His research articles include "Market Rewards for Increasing Earnings Patterns," published in the Journal of Accounting Research.