This book is very easy to follow and serves as a good reference for more advanced finance classes.

For a mystery book, this novel fails at every turn. The main character, a young boy named Charlie, begins his life growing up on a farm where his father attacks him with terrible non-harmonies and atrocities music was never intended to produce. Soon, Charlie is swept up by the idea that music need not to sound pretty, and that life be filled with hesitance and incompletion. This novel falls short when it start to focus, only a few pages in, on Charlie's Second Piano Sonata. Why the auther chose this, the most unanticipated work since Garfunkel's "Songs From a Parent to a Child", on which to base a story of suspense is beyond me. The most disappointing point to all of this is that Geoffrey Block, a man with so promising a name, could fall so far from genius. Don't let his IQ fool you.

If any college plans to teach a course on Richard Rodgers, they need look no further than this book for the perfect text. Here is a collection of essays, book chapters, reviews, etc., dealing with Rodgers in each of his eras. They range from a Time magazine piece on Rodgers and Hart in the late 30s, to a Holiday magazine piece on Rodgers and Hammerstein in the late 50s. The collection helps give the reader an even better understanding of Richard Rodgers than he does in his own autobiography, because, as the editor notes, in the interviews that make up the final section, Rodgers is much more at ease and more glib.
Some of the articles are a little technical in nature, with their study of Rodgers' musical compositions, but anyone familiar with his writings should be able to understand what they're referring to, by simply running the tune through your head as you analyze what's being discussed.
The book is hardly a whitewash, and is amazingly fair in its presentation of articles both friendly and not so friendly. For example, there's a chapter from Diahann Carroll's autobiography that paints Rodgers in a very unflattering light.
The collection is not only informative, but it's very entertaining. While this book is good for people just getting familiar with Rodgers, it's probably best suited for the well-versed scholar, who will enjoy this research packed together in a handy volume, eliminating the need to head to the library's microfilm collection. Also, the editor does a very good job of pointing the reader to other articles that were not included (usually because of the cost, as he mentions in the foreword)
but present an opposing view or elaborate further on an idea.
Great job!

The contents of this book are very thorough, complete, and factual. The subject is very interesting, but if you don't understand music, he is sometimes hard to follow. He was my professor and this was a class text. Without his oral interpretation, I was, at times, left wondering what he meant. The book is filled with great pictures and original score. If your interested in how musicals are created, definately read this book.

As an undergrad taking his first finance class, I have have found this book to be quite useful. The concepts are explained in simplified, less-complicated ways and make reading each chapter less frustrating than perhaps some others (compared to some of the econ texts that I have had to use!).

It is well-written, concise, and employs some very straightforward, easy-to-follow graphs/diagrams. Also, both the formulas and the exercises at the end of each chapter are quite useful.

The only reason that I did not give it a 5-star rating is because some of the chapters did not use enough "real-world examples" or hypothetical situations in some of the more challenging lessons. This might better aid those students who are new to finance or simply need another angle to better grasp the idea.

This text is characterized by its extreme simplicty in explanation and presentation of its material. The flow of presenting the contents of each chapter is so sequentially logical that it makes the reader grasp the financial concepts very fast and effectively. Colorful illustrative diagrams are employed extensively to facilitate a high level of understanding and help the learner develop the necessary conceptual links between inter-related topics and items. In addition, it is very comprehensive and intensely supported with a "luggage" of real-life cases .I recommend this excellent text to everyone who needs to take an introductory course in corporate finance.

When it comes to Principles of Finance textbooks, readers have many options from which to choose. I've read dozens of finance textbooks and have yet to find one that tops Block & Hirt. This book is written at a level that anyone can understand and still provides a depth of coverage sufficient for a complete understanding of the discipline at an "undergraduate" level. I particularly enjoy the "balance sheet" approach taken by the authors, which is a direct contrast to many of the competing textbooks. I also appreciate the consideration given to working capital issues; a topic frequently neglected or pushed aside by other textbooks.

The examples are easy to follow, and the authors provide extensive summary and practice problems for readers to test their understanding. I've taught from a number of textbooks and have found this book to be the one that students respond to best. As is true for many disciplines, those who are unwilling to actually "read" the book or put forth any effort will struggle mightly with this material. In such a case, the fault does not lie with this particular book.