Principles of Corporate Finance with S&P bind-in card

The book I got was supposedly used but it was in a great, almost new condition. I couldn't tell it was used at all.
I got the book b/c its required in a course.

Pros:
1. Fun to read (read the footnotes - the authors have a great sense of humor)
2. Explains concepts extremely well
3. Great examples, index, and chapter quizzes

Cons:
1. No solutions manual (there are quiz solutions, just no solutions to supplemental material)
2. Part V, Chapter 17 uses uncommon terminology - unless you take the second semester Finance class don't worry about it. Your prof will address this...

Finance can be a difficult subject for some, and this book simply makes finance easier. The authors have a great sense of humor and their footnotes are either (1) funny, or (2) incredibly interesting. In any highly quantitative course you're going to have to read a short-ish chapter that takes a long time to complete - this book makes that "long time" enjoyable. This is my favorite college/university level book & when I talk to others who've read this I hear the similar praise..

The authors of this book do not make it easy for a new Finance student to understand essential concepts. I had to look for other resources to get ahead in the class. I found myself countless hours re-reading chapters in order to understand concepts fully.


I do not recommend this book AT ALL if you are a new Finance Student.

F- !

This book is an introduction to many topics in corporate finance. It is mostly well written and easy to understand if you are familiar with the topics already. The book offers many valuable bits of knowledge and I learned many things from it.

My main complaint with this book, however, and the reason I have only rated it at 3 stars, is its emphasis and almost blind belief in the Efficient Market Hypothesis and the derived theories such as the Capital Asset Pricing Model. This belief influences many parts of the book, but the assumption that stock markets have a superior intelligence in the aggregate is clearly a fallacy in my opinion and experience, because the stock markets often do exhibit 'cascading' irrational behaviour.

Another book which may interest you is: Analysis for Financial Management by Robert Higgins, which is a shorter book that is perhaps also a little better at explaining many of the core concepts in corporate finance, although it naturally doesn't cover all the details of this much larger book.

PS: This review is for the 8th edition.

I was a doctorate student in a public administration program years ago, taking corporate finance as an elective. This was perhaps the best textbook I read in that whole Ph.D. program. The authors really make the difficult topics easy to understand, with plentiful examples and cases. I am teaching a public finance course in a university now, finding myself using this book as reference often.