The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return

by Mihir Desai

A surprising look at the often misunderstood world of finance by a leading professor from Harvard University. 
 
What can Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope teach us about risk management? How does Mel Brooks’ THE PRODUCERS illustrate the problem of corporate governance? And what’s the real lesson to be gleaned on value creation from the Bible’s Parable of Talents?
 
The WISDOM OF FINANCE turns the often dry and dusty world of finance upside down. Expanding on a “last lecture” given in 2015 to graduating MBA students, Mihir Desai illustrates the core principles of finance via a variety of literary, cinematic, and historical references. Desai’s unexpected insight, humor, and irony offer a new perspective for insiders and outsiders alike. Unprecedented in its scope, this book will change how you think about finance and reveal the true moral foundation of this often maligned industry.
 

Genres: Finance, Economics, Business, Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Money

241 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Ishwardeep Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I'm a former student of Mihir Desai. I had a lot of expectations from this book knowing Mihir as a teacher, and knowing his ability to break down complex ideas into their simple, intuitive, core understandable by a lay person. This book exceeded those high expectations by showing me a different side of Mihir - his understanding not only of Finance, but also of life in general. Not only does he explain ideas in Finance with elegance, but he relates them to ideas in life (relationships, love, marriage, career choices) in a very deep manner. I found myself reflecting on my own life most of the book, but once I was done reading, I also walked away with a much better appreciation of the concepts in Finance. This is coming from a practitioner of risk management who has read multiple books on the finance topics covered in the "Wisdom of Finance". The book was also a breath of fresh air for me by giving a new meaning to my profession, which has come to be derided in the society and in its depictions in the mass media.

Highly recommended for the financial geek well versed with ideas in finance, for the lay person trying to develop an intuition for finance, and everybody in between!

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite possibly one of the most interesting books I've read in years. The author takes stories far and wide - from Jane Austin, to Stringer Bell from The Wire, to The Simpsons, Shakespeare, The Producers, and so many more - to craft a story of the basics of finance from the perspective of the humanities. There is amazing insight at every turn as he draws from literature, history, art, film, and theater to illustrate basic concepts of finance and their importance in life. I can't recommend this enough!

[Jason Furman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Wisdom of Finance is worth reading if only to marvel at Mihir Desai’s amazing mind, wide range, and exciting set of insights. The book undersells itself, claiming to use a range of novels, movies, music, TV shows, philosophy and history to better understand and illuminate finance. And it certainly does that, covering the full set of topics: insurance, asset pricing, corporate finance, principal-agent problems and bankruptcy among other topics. But the book is about much more, including better understanding literature and our own lives.

To give one example that illustrates the astonishing range of Desai’s understanding, consider his illustration of leverage by comparing George Orwell (who went into semi-seclusion for years to write 1984) to Jeff Koons (who at his peak employed 150 people to produce his ideas). He uses this not just to understand the role of leverage in the financial system but also to introspect about his own life where he is on the Orwell-Koons spectrum, and how that relates to happiness.

And did I mention the astonishing range? We have gotten used to Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy showing up in economics books. But everything from ancient Greek tragedy to Kanye West? All effortless incorporated in many cases with interesting juxtapositions, like the Orwell-Koons example.

If this enjoyable and thought provoking book does not convince you of the wisdom of finance it will at least convince you of the wisdom of Mihir Desai.

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a beautiful and relevant book that I did not think I needed to read. Finance gets a bad wrap, but the issues finance deals with are human issues. Desai shows this through literary criticism and explanations of core financial issues. Risk, for example, is about the bad stuff that can happen to you in life. Finance can show us how to deal with this risk. I teach contracts and I'm always trying to convince my students that contracts are about trust and relationships.

I wish he had done more here in teaching the finance types about ethics and bringing in those human values (value for non monetizable things) into their lives and models. A great and satisfying read overall.

[Sidharth Mishra · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book that looks at finance from a very refreshing lens!

The author does a tremendous job of connecting the myriad concepts of finance, it's origins with our lives through very relatable experiences and stories of people in the preceding millennia and right upto today.

For example -
1. Insurance came about because there is inherent randomness and unpredictability in life and while it is difficult to make a sound guess about it in isolation for a single instance / individual it becomes much easier to make a good guess about it in aggregate.

2. As firms use leverage to expand and grow beyond their existing means (i.e. the cash at hand), similarly human beings can also accomplish great things and have a rewarding life as they make commitments i.e. lever up; the thing to note is that as with firms one should lever up to the point one can handle.

3. As with firms, so even in an individual's life the people we have in our life are assets. Some are negative beta assets whose love for us is unconditional - Parents, close family; low-beta assets - close friends who remain with us through the thick and thin; high-beta assets - who are with us in our good times and kind of leave us when the going gets tough. We need to value these categories in that order.

4. Through quite a few examples the book explains any sort of risk taking has a probability of failure, but failure as long as it is forward looking will let one succeed eventually - whether it be at an individual level or at an organisation level. One gets to know how bankruptcy rules came about to let people fail with grace and more importantly to prevent destruction of value

A highly recommended book, for anyone remotely interested in finance - which we all should be as it is inseparable from our lives! It not only would help one understand finance but also help understand it's applicability in our day to day lives for both money and non-money matters.

[Jay French · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I read Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” I found that I really appreciated his efforts to explain wealth and capital in historical context by referring to the fiction of the times, especially Jane Austen’s. By using the descriptions of the characters and their place in the world from those fictional stories written centuries back, you understood how wealth made itself known, how money was spent, and how wealth brought status and the ability to purchase fine tools (e.g. a horse drawn barouche-landau was the Tesla of Austen's day). The fiction reflected the times.

In “The Wisdom of Finance”, author Mihir Desai takes the idea of illustrating financial situations with fiction through a variety of financial concepts, from risks and insurance to investments and return, and to debt and bankruptcy. He touches on the poetry of insurance executive Wallace Stevens, the tradeoffs in “The Remains of the Day”, and Dashiell Hammett’s story of how a fellow reacted to a near-death experience in “The Maltese Falcon”. Only a few of the examples were specifically about finance. Most were about situations in life that related to the concept being discussed. Desai also moves beyond fiction, exploring these financial concepts through poetry, song lyrics, recent news articles, and TV show episodes.

I liked the idea behind this book – using the liberal arts to illustrate stony financial concepts that many financial students probably learned without relating to the real world, or at least to events that could have happened in the real world since we are talking about fiction. The book is based on a “last lecture” given to Harvard business students, so it may have been one of the few chances for them to look to the liberal arts for storytelling prowess on these kinds of financial relationships/events. The book was written well. I did find the mindset of the author, basing the covered concepts on a foundation of risk, was entirely appropriate, but if you don’t think in that way all the time it might cause the reader to wonder about the path taken. I know I wondered and had different (lower) expectations, and I believe it was because I was thinking more as an accountant than a financial manager. Overall, the book was well done and enjoyable to me, more enjoyable than I initially expected. If the idea of using stories to illustrate financial concepts grabs you, you may well enjoy it.

[Undrakh · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Wisdom of Finance’ was a book that really punched me with fresh ideas; it’s been a while since I experienced this level of 'new ideas flow' from reading. It doesn’t have anything to do with me working in finance (maybe a little, like 5%). Even though it contains multitude of cases happened in the finance world, the book itself is not about finance – it’s about values, relationships, commitments, and many more. Mihir Desai takes basic ideas about risk and return, capital asset pricing model etc and turns them into remarkably deep and authentic lessons we can apply to thinking about the world and our lives. It provides an excellent framework to think about how we should approach life’s important aspects with ideas borrowed from the ‘not-so-much-loved’ finance universe (reference to the chapter ‘Why Everyone Hates Finance’). I loved how he connected literature, arts, and finance to deliver his ideas in a form of outstanding and highly readable work. So glad to discover this book from Mihir Desai's podcast with his colleagues.

- The act of creating ourselves is a miracle – and, fortunately, we have more than seven days to become principals rather than agents

- "Must is who we are, what we believe, and what we do when we are alone with our truest, most authentic self. In our instincts, our cravings and longings, the things and places and ideas we burn for, the intuition that swells up from somewhere deep inside of us. Must is what happens when we stop conforming to other people’s ideals and start connecting to our own."

-"To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances, in circumstances for which you are not yourself to blame"

-But underneath all of finance is this underlying idea: the pursuit of more will yield less and less. And any expectation other than that is not consistent with the ideas of finance

[Diego · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredibly smart journey about finance. It felt like I was engrossed in his Harvard Business School class and left wiser from it. His ability to use literary classics to explain finance is so impressive. This might be one of the wisest and interesting books I’ve ever read.

[Bridgett · Rating 2 out of 5]

As the title implies, this book attempts to bring together the worlds of finance and humanities. It uses literary and other assorted media references to illustrate particular financial concepts, and argues that finance can be used for the good of humanity, despite the finance's reputation as greedy and evil.

Although I earned my degree in a social science, I find myself working in a finance-related field. I feel pretty ambivalent about my current career, and I hoped that this book might open my eyes to a perspective I hadn't considered. And it did provide me with some new concepts and perspectives, but ultimately, I feel as ambivalent about this book as I do my job. It just didn't convince me the way I had hoped to be convinced.

[Jaan Liitmäe · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most loveliest surprises of 2022 from reading experiences! Blending finance with everything else and putting it into fair perspective, just pure joy.

[Lorenzo Primiterra · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's an unusual book that connect finance with real life stories, full of wisdom and real stories of past man and woman, not always connected to finance.
This is the kind of book that talks about a subject using another and allows your brain to make connections and think multi dimensional.
If I could I would give more than 5 stars.

[Aditya आदित्य]

I have talked of this before. Concilleince, I mean. It is the prized purpose of many intellectuals. And upon reading alot of books, I realized that this search for the "Theory of Everything" is the favourite pursuit of physicists, economists, philosophers, and other public (pedestrian) intellectuals alike. Such is the case with Professor Desai as well. He is kind enough to be explicit about this attempt of his in the final note in his book. He even mentions E. O. Wilson in hopes of pitching this book with the likes of Consilience, a more serious book on this very serious matter. Unfortunately, this book fails to achieve what it seeks to achieve.

But it is of some value. Especially to the usual MBA-types. This is the second book by an HBS faculty that has been underwhelming for me. Completely understandable because it is impossible to discharge the brand image of Harvard. Nonetheless this book explains the major concepts in finance as innately human phenomena: risk and its mitigation through insurance, options and diversification, creation of value and its estimation, leverage through debt, and going bankrupt. Professor Desai even tries to salvage the reputation of his discipline, albeit half-heartedly. He does a good job of being an able spokesperson for the field of finance. He teaches it at HBS after all...

Thus this book is valuable because it shines light upon the field of finance, uncovering the essential role it plays in managing the intrinsic human issue and facilitating a better world for all of us. It is crucial at these times when finance as an industry is popularly believed to do more harm than good. Would it convert someone opposed to capitalism? I don't really know. But it sure reassures a believer in capitalism like myself :)

[Myles · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Wisdom of Finance it seems is a primer on the moral hazards undergraduate and more so graduate business students can expect to find once they leave the academy and join Wall Street.

Author Mihir A. Desai employs literature to explain how the principles of business and high finance inform universal human challenges not only in business, but in life.

As a graduate of English Lit and later an MBA, I was a sucker for this kind of book. Indeed, I enjoyed it, if I didn’t think all of the chapters were equally strong, or the morals all that intimidating.

It is substantively a book of moral philosophy.

I ran into my own moral philosopher in business school, the noted Canadian accounting professor Al Rosen, the sort of guy you either loved, or loved to hate. The guy who failed an entire accounting class, but then had to walk it back after the students complained.

What Prof. Rosen taught me — and our relationship wasn’t the easiest — was that numbers masked lies as often as they told the truth, perhaps moreso. And the reason he taught this to his accounting students was that the evolution of accounting was the evolution of storytelling.

If you look at a balance sheet or a profit and loss statement, you were purportedly looking at the viability of a business in a moment of time and that the conventions of accounting storytelling, like “accounts receivable” and “accounts payable” not to mention “fixed assets” were to tell you the value in real time of a business even though none of those values could possibly be right.

The numbers were usually created to pacify the reader, to keep the reader from looking behind the numbers at the underlying value of the business, and the lying liers who wanted you to accept them as truth...usually management. Rosen’s point wasn’t that the numbers were always meant to to disguise malfeasance, just that the nature of the process of storytelling required simplification and gross generalization.

Desai gets at some of this in his chapter about the problem of agency, whether managers are really working for shareholders, or customers, or their employees, or just themselves. This is not necessarily a problem of finance. It is as much a problem of commerce and social psychology.

Economic behaviouralists like Daniel Kahneman, psychologist Dan Ariely, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein get into how the mind actually works when people are given moral choices disguised as financial options.

Another book I read recently, “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much,” by Sandhills Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, shows how perceived scarcity can ruin or enhance our decision making, depending on the circumstances.

But today I am dealing with the moral quandary of what to do in a pandemic that will accord with my personal ethics, and the dictates of business. How much loyalty as a businessman I owe to my employees vs my family and their sacrifices on the road to building a viable business.

if I close up my shops and lay people off am I protecting my employees or letting them down and dumping their personal needs on to society. The customers seem to need our goods and services, and the gov’t has classified my business as essential to the economy...so we stay open to the extent that my employees will come in to work.

In other crisis I have simply met the challenges head on and worked harder. In this crisis I have to change directions fast and, because I am at a high risk of infection, have to stay out of my stores for mine and my family’s safety.

There are my obligations to landlords, to suppliers, to the financial institutions, the utilities, and to govt.

These are not easy questions either. And literature, while a nice diversion, doesn’t really help me all that much.

[Fate Trap · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Mihir highlights how human finance is, and how it's all connected to our basic instincts of risk. How we can find examples of financial concepts in broad range of literature and stories, and how naturally the current financial system evolved to be, stemming from our basic needs. I would recommend anyone working or thinking of working in finance to read this book. Was fun to listen one of my favorite hosts of After hours for 6 hours and 30 minutes in his audiobook.

[Guilherme Dantas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bom livro. Faz um paralelo entre conceitos de finanças e a nossa própria vida. O autor utiliza exemplos da própria vida para elucidar os pontos, tornando a leitura bem agradável.

[Amir Bartari · Rating 5 out of 5]

این کتاب یکی از متفاوت ترین کتای های موجود در زمینه مالی است. تمرکز کتاب بر کشف روابط بین مالی و مسائل روزمره ی زندگی
انسان ها است.
کتاب تلاش می کند تا مرز های در هم تنیده مالی و امور زندگی و اخلاقی را برای ما روشن تر کند. نویسنده تلاش می کند مفاهیم مالی را در رمان ها، اشعار و قصه های روزمره پیدا کند. کتاب را به همه ی کسانی که به دنیای مالی علاقه دارند توصیه می کنم.
کتاب از 8 فصل تشکیل شده است که در هر فصل نقش یکی از اصول مهم مالی در زندگی و رد پای آن در فرهنگ و هنر بررسی می شود.
به گفته ی نویسنده، این کتاب به متخصصان مالی ای که هر روز سر در اعداد و ارقام و فرمول ها دارند حکمت مالی و راه رستگاری در حرفه را آموزش خواهد داد، چه کنیم تا کارمان باعث خلق ارزش شود نه نابود کردن آن. در عین حال کسانی که هیچ ایده ای از مالی و
کاربرد های آن ندارند بدون طرح هیچگونه تعریف فنی یا فرمول و نمودار، کاربرد های مالی و نقش مثبت آن ها در زندگی را درک خواهند کرد.

[Hakan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The one who are looking for "how finance works or academic information about the subject" will find "TOO FEW" in this short book. The author extremely focused on "intersection of finance and everyday life(love, romance,movies, music, insatiability, philosophy)" .. and I think that is boring for FİNANCE...

[Abhishek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just to get it out of the way, the reason I picked up this book was to not learn the technical details of finance. This book delivers on what it sets out to do i.e. explain financial concepts that seem out of this world to an untrained person. It does the opposite as well, if you're familiar with financial concepts already, prof Desai will open your eyes to the real life implications. My favourite chapter was on the principal-agent problem narrowly followed by how principles of mergers and acquisitions and romantic relationships are basically same.

The book is peppered with some great stories and case studies which humanises the financial concepts to a great degree. The fact that you can find reference to Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy in one page and a few pages later you're reading about Greek tragedy and Kanye West, shows how great the range of the author is capable of.

This is once again one of those books that I wished I had access to when I was younger. It is genuinely a must read if we find ourselves at the crossroads of risk and rewards, as we all do on a daily basis.

Thanks professor Desai for such a balanced and thought provoking book. Erudite and entertaining at the same time.

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met this professor from his “Leading with Finance” class at HBS. Excellent resource to understand finances. No figures or numbers found in his book. He takes you from personal stories and takes you to a deep understanding of finance terms and concepts. Either you are new on the econ or finance room, you’ll get something new out of it.

Arts, history, films, literature, etc. makes part of the stories of this book. I got a way deeper understanding of the insurance business and his importance in the economy. It brought me fresh ideas to digest and ponder upon. If you want to understand more about economics, finance and this chaotic world in which we live, this book will help you a lot.

[Sameera · Rating 5 out of 5]

My personal rating is 9/10. I mean, just go read it. My favourite chapters are 'On Value'+ 'Becoming a producer' + 'No Romance Without Finance'. I think what sets the book apart is the intersection of economics, politics and history to explain the evolution of finance and it's main concepts. Desai does a great job to help outsiders (external to the finance industry) understand concepts like portfolio theory, hedge funds etc. Book can be finished within a few-days (4-5) maximum.

[Josef · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mihir Desai is well read in the technical and number-based side of finance as well as the philosophical and practical. He illustrates the relevance of finance as not only a field for making money but as a way of improving individuals lives and bettering humanity. The book is full of stories and references to many iconic literary works that it's easy to forget this book is from a finance professor. Overall the book is an excellent teacher of not only finance principles but life principles. The author makes finance approachable to anyone, not just finance students. Would highly recommend.

[Bruno Betancourt · Rating 5 out of 5]

La brecha entre el mundo financiero y las humanidades no siempre ha existido. Desai nos enseña a pensar en las finanzas como una disciplina que podemos encontrar en los rincones más humanos de nuestras vidas, ayudándonos a entender con diferentes historias y fábulas los conceptos centrales del mundo financiero.

[Chris Brady · Rating 5 out of 5]

A philosophy book through a financial lens. I'm not sure this amazing author knew how profound his message might be.

Featuring constructed and conceptually crystal clear

I hope to live like this.

[Noa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clever, fun nonfiction read on the parallels between finance and the humanities. Expected a little more humanities than finance based on the author's note at the beginning of the book and don't know if one who doesn't have some background in finance would enjoy it as much as I did. But, it was more fun than my finance/economics classes in college and an enjoyable read. Loved the chapter on marriage/mergers as well as likening stock options to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

[Will Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had me hooked. It has some of the most thought provoking concepts I have encountered. Mihir illustrates how finance is a set of tools and frameworks for dealing with an uncertain and chaotic future. He educates the reader on how these frameworks can be applied to one’s own life by weaving in parables, novels, and history in an entertaining way. I look forward to reading this book a second time and listening to Mihir’s lecture that inspired him to write this masterpiece.

[Grant Weeks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audible. Love Desai and his writing.

[Keith · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Wisdom of Finance is a book that certainly promises a lot. What lessons can we glean from the academic discipline of finance that will help us lead better everyday lives? In turn, what can examples from art, philosophy, literature, or film provide to help us understand our economic relationships better? Indeed, any volume that manages to conflate in a compelling way the truth and beauty of the humanities with the practical realities of managing financial opportunities would seem to be a noble and intoxicating venture.

And yet, that is not quite what has happened here. Unfortunately, despite the best intentions and considerable erudition that Mihir Desai brings to the project, I found some elements of the book’s development to be too flawed to get past. Starting with the premise that finance can be separated into either asset pricing or corporate finance applications, the author divides the analysis into chapters focusing on a different economic topic—such as diversification, the capital asset pricing model, the use of leverage, or principal-agent problems—that he explains in lay terms while “illuminating” them with fictional and real-life anecdotes.

A recurring problem with this approach is that these illuminations from the humanities are often stretched beyond reason. For instance, the notion that the main character in Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener sinks into inaction because he had too much “optionality” in his life is a tortured interpretation, at best. (Incidentally, Bartleby was employed by a law firm and had nothing to do with finance.) Also, the metaphor the author uses to explain the institution of marriage as equivalent to a corporate merger is of limited usefulness beyond explaining the behavior of an extremely small number of families who lived during the Italian Renaissance or the Hapsburg dynasty. Finally, using Lucy’s “muddle” in A Room With a View (i.e., being true to oneself versus satisfying society’s expectations) is a highly questionable example of a principal-agent conflict.

More troubling, though, are the places in the book where the author also gets the economics wrong. Two passages stand out in that regard. First, the discussion of high-beta assets being “…not highly valued because of their limited diversification value” is simply not correct. As a measure of an asset’s systematic risk, beta is calculated as the ratio of the total volatility of the asset and the total volatility of the market, which is then multiplied by the correlation between them. That is, an asset can only have a high beta (i.e., greater than 1.0) if its volatility ratio exceeds 1.0, irrespective of its correlation level. However, this fact did not support the author’s suggestion that we need to deemphasize the high-beta people in our lives because they do not diversify our personal portfolios.

A second inexplicable error occurs near the end of the book when the author tries to reconcile the existence of nefarious and seemingly insatiable characters, such as Gordon Gecko in the film Wall Street or Eric Packer from Don DeLillo’s novel Cosmopolis, with what he sees as the true wisdom in finance. To support his notion that greed is not inherent in the discipline, he describes the concept of the diminishing marginal utility of wealth as follows: “Beneath all of finance is this underlying idea: the pursuit of more will yield less and less. And any expectation other than that is not consistent with the ideas of finance. The game of accumulation is one that will leave one less and less satisfied as one gains more and more.” That interpretation of what he calls the “bedrock idea of finance” is so egregiously wrong that it is truly shocking to have come from an economist of the author’s stature. Diminishing marginal utility refers to a situation in which each additional dollar you acquire makes you better off than before, but at a decreasing rate. So, if you achieved, say, 100 units of satisfaction from the last dollar you received, the next dollar would only increase your happiness by 99 units. Clearly, though, you would still have the incentive to acquire more or more dollars because you would still be better off when you do. I suspect that Desai actually understands this but, once again, an accurate portrayal of finance theory would not have been consistent with the argument he wants to make.

I suppose it is worth noting that this is a book that I really wanted to love. Simply recognizing that finance is a topic inextricably linked to everything we do in life is a valuable enterprise to undertake. In fact, the author succeeds in his goals in many ways; his non-technical explanations of the corporate finance topics are very good and the link he creates between the financial topic of leverage and the commitments we make in our lives (e.g., friendships, marriage, having children) is a profound and useful way to look at the world. I only wish that that the entire volume had risen to that level.

[Lawrence FitzGerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Desai knew he needed a catchy title and thus The Wisdom of Finance but his real thesis is discovering humanity in finance and thus the rest of the title. If I were forced to put wisdom on a numerical scale with finance as 1, then humanity might be a 100, and the ignorance of humanity might be 10,000. So Desai faced an uphill climb with this reader. But he manages.

Precisely because he looked for the humanity and only then its pale reflection in finance and not the other way around. Replete with examples from history and literature, not to mention everyday life, there little are nuggets for everyone.

At the end he wonders why the world has such a low opinion of finance, but fails to find a compelling answer. I suggest it is the know-it-all elitism that extends to economics as a whole. And never have so many had so little to be proud of. To the practitioners of the hard sciences economics and its snotty little offspring, finance, are more mythology than science. This is a great tragedy. A comprehensive scientific understanding of economics is of far greater importance to humanity than, say, particle physics.

Yes, I despair of economics. After all, it's hard to fix what's broke if you have no real understanding of the machine.

[David Wilusz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author echoes my feelings that, rather than being at odds (or even at war), the humanities and sciences - finance in particular - are in fact complimentary and intertwined in ways that few today appreciate. Leveraging wide-ranging examples, from Jane Austen to the Producers and George Orwell, the author frames finance in everyday human terms, defending the usefulness and practicality of risk management in particular, something near and dear to my heart. The author is clearly well-read and has thought deeply about the subject, which is reflected in the quality of the writing. At a time when bashing the financial industry is all the rage, it was refreshing to read such a lucid defense of the field.

[Eunjun Choo · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a noobie to finance, I wanted an accessible finance text to introduce me to what the heck is finance. Fortunately, this book has exceeded my expectations. Even though previous background in finance would have helped, Desai describes finance with such a humanity that even a noob like me was able to understand and apply finance strategies to my daily life from spending proportional amount of time on "High-beta assets" such as acquaintances to "negative-beta assets" such as my family.
Moreover, the book's humanity approach to finance helps to give many personable reasons to why strategies such as "Leverage" is useful or painful.

Highly recommend to... pretty much anyone. Even those who believe that finance is too math heavy", Desai uses so many historical and literature examples to illustrate finance applications that I forgot that the finance course in my University has a Calculus pre requisite.