Finance

"Every year dozens of new textbooks are published. No wonder as Willie Sutton told the judge about why he robbed banks: "That's where the money is." But only every other decade does there arrive an innovative new work that sets a new pattern of excellence and pedagogy. This Bodie-Merton Finance has been long expected. And it proves to be well worth the wait. Good teachability, like good wine, requires much deliberate time.
In the meanwhile, Robert Merton shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Economics. This was never a case of "if" but only a case of "when," for it has been well said, Merton is the Isaac Newton of modern finance theory. And ever since their graduate student days at MIT, Bodie and Merton have made a productive team. Speaking as one of their teachers, I hail their demonstrating that water can indeed rise above its source. The kind of finance that matters for modern experts goes beyond the tools that have been revolutionising Wall Street: the pricing of options and other contingent derivatives. Yes, all that is important practically and theoretically. But as this book's coverage shows, it is the Main Street economy of production, capital budgeting, personal finance, and rational accounting that is best illuminated by the overdue breakthrough in teaching."

Paul Samuelson.