Customer Reviews

The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course In Finance for Non-Financial Managers

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Understanding financial statements is one of the key skills needed for any Investor, Employee or anyone interested in determining the health of a company. However, most of the books written on this subject are by the Accountants for the Accountants. Due to which they are hardly ever comprehensible to the lay person.

That's where this book comes into picture. "The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Finance for Nonfinancial Managers" is an excellent educational book which guides you through the concepts involved in financial statements like Income Statement, Balance Sheet in a simple and straight forward manner interspersed with a dash of humor here and there.

Robert Cooke's keep it simple approach, use of funny, fictitious companies like "Spouse House" in addition to use of comprehensible businesses like "Lemonade Stand" to build up the concepts behind financial statements makes it a fantastic book. Use of common place personal names like Rosie, Alice, Jeff etc makes the book an easy read and the story telling format nicely engages the reader.

Interestingly the Author/Publishers seem to have limited their audience by naming the book for "Non-Financial Managers". But in fact this book is for everyone ...

I would highly, highly recommend this book ... Definitely read it!

-Sachin

An excellent tutorial in small business financial understanding and management. Clear, well-written, highly palatable presentation of a normally dry subject. Emphasis on concepts, with enough practical numerical examples to make the point. The book will not make you an accountant, but it will give you basic skills, the ability to understand accountant-speak, and a good grasp of the underlying asset-based long range financial perspectives. I found the self-test exams at the ends of the chapters helpful. I have looked through a number of books on this subject and this is the only one I've found that gave me the information I wanted in such a direct and accessible way. Thank you Mr. Cooke!

I run a small and busy service business where I am one of the service providers. I have always used CPA's to do my taxes and have always been left feeling lost, confused, burdened by tons of reports they couldn't or didn't explain to me. I muddled through but enough was enough so I started to educate myself. This book is a gold mine. It is so readable, so understandable and so funny (yes, he puts in wonderful amusing examples -- Uncle Roscoe's yacht and such). I cannot think of anything I would expect to be more dull and boring that an accounting text but this one is fun to read, easy to understand and the problems at the end of the chapter are on point. I have to work on them to get the right solution thus reinforcing the principle. I would hardily recommend this book to anyone who has to handle money or talk to accountants. I feel confident to deal with my next accountant far more beneficially than past experiences have been.

As I cannot contact each reader/reviewer individually, I am sending this to you in this format.
I am Robert's widow and applied my secretarial skills to working with him on his books. In the process, I learned something about accounting and a lot about how hard a writer works to put out a quality product. I am certainly proud of him and recommend all of his books. He died in December 2009, but McGraw-Hill is bringing out a 3rd edition, revised by another writer but retaining the majority of Robert's text. It will be up to date, and, this too, I heartily recommend.
Again, thank you to those who took the time to review. You rate 5 stars with me!
Cay Cooke

I'm not a finance person nor do I plan to be one in the future. Will working in sales for the past 10 years I have become more aware of what I don't know and finance is surely one of those areas. This book covers the basic's of the financial world without putting you into a comma. The homework at the end of each chapter gets to be a bit of a pain since I was looking for the "concept" not trying to become an accountant. The best part of the book is it starts basic and builds off of that throughout the book which helped me understand some of the more complex financial terms. Good book for someone trying to get up to speed quick.

The book is great, and a big thank you to the writers. When it came to the on-line exam and certification, I am still strugeling with the Mc-graw hill support. After sending them two emails I finaly got to the exam on the internet: [...].
BUT, after I finished the exam, they basicly just said thank you and good bye. What I wanted when I passed the test with 90% was a form where I could enter my adress so they could send me the certificate, but no no. Two emails later, I havent heard a word from them yet. Mc-graw hill - this sux and if feels like you are close to commiting fraud when it is so difficult to first find the exam and impossible and close to impossible to get the certificate. This was not what I expected when I saw "Earn certificate of achievement through the free on-line examination" on the book cover. Without this trubble, the book would easily get five stars.

Very helpful for the student thinking of pursuing a degree in finance. If you have no finance or business experience, this is a good place to start.

The best of this book is how accounting and management are described. Very practical and useful.

The author send you the certificate as promised.

Interesting and useful read that helped me better understand finance when this is not a core strength