How Finance Works: The HBR Guide to Thinking Smart About the Numbers Paperback – April 23, 2019

Found this book from a Youtube video where the author gave a talk under the same title. Really glad to see the book maintained the essence of the talk, while containing a lot more useful examples and rich details. I am a finance novice a below average owner/trader of stocks. This book is the closest I can imagine to systematically learning the fundamentals of finance and to developing a set of core intuitions when approaching financial questions. It pares down complex topics you read in the news to fun and easy to read examples, while preserving the quantitive spirits that is critical in financial analysis. I found the author to have incredible knowledge and top notch teaching skills to turn a finance book into a page turner.

Dr. Desai explains key finance concepts in a simple and cohesive way. You will sharpen not just your finance understanding, but also intuition, as the narrative flows from one concept to another.Highly recommended for anyone looking to understand how to world functions through the lens of finance.

I bought this based on a YouTube interview with Mihir Desai, and it exceeded all my expectations.Finance can be exceedingly technical, but this book provides a reasonable and useful intro that is not technical. This is not to say, however, that it's an easy read -- you cannot read it like a novel.If you want technical, I suggest Valuation by Koller, Goedhart, Wessels.

This is really very informative and interesting book. The concept of finance is easily illustrated with very interesting examples and stories of known firms. The author explained the concepts to be understood by anyone. Reading this book and understanding financial analysis, value creation, company valuation and capital allocation will make easy to open WSJ or FS newspapers and read it with joy.

Good book. Helps explain business finance.

I used to work in investments. So I have quite a bit of expertise. This book is a great option for beginners to the topic. I especially like the case examples, which really help make the theoretical more practical.I realize that finance is a dry topic for people who are not as interested or passionate as I am. But I do think this book is lively enough to keep you reading.

I am almost certain this is the first unsolicited review I have ever written in my life about anything I've ever bought. Ever! I feel lucky to have read this book. I've always been intimidated by finance and how hard it would be to find a legit CFO for my businesses. Well, for the near future, thanks to this book, I feel like I now am empowered to fill that mystical role/skillset myself. I truly believe this $20 book will save me millions and millions of dollars over the rest of my life. And because of how interesting he makes Finance (I kid you not), I'm not sure that I wouldn't rather fill the CFO role myself and hire a CEO. I wish I would've known all this stuff years ago. It would have saved me so much more money by not hiring the wrong CFO and losing my first business in the process. I know this review seems fake because of how awesome I think this book is, but I assure you, it's 100% real. In summary, this book made finance go from intimidating to inspirational. If you think you're not a numbers person or that finance isn't for you, read this book before you give up on it. Your worldview will open up immensely. I'm buying one of these books for every person on my leadership team. Without it, you're playing the game with one hand tied behind your back.

I don’t tend to write reviews. But he’s made this book so accessible, interesting and tied in real-life examples. I’ve read a lot of learning materials in finance space, this is the one book that makes me want to go back to school and be taught by professors of this calibre.Thank you for writing this helpful book. I look forward to learning more from you.