Rating: 
Summary: TOO MANY ERRORS. Would not recommend for entry-level student
Review: This book is filled with tons and tons and tons and tons of errors, just right where one needs to bring the whole financial concepts together. These errors often interrupt learning pace and disrupt the thought process in understanding financial concepts and theories, thus creating difficulties in proving the analyses and in deriving the proper mathematical calculations. The faults doesn't end there. The subtitles are quite misleading. They often don't concur to the subsequent explanatory text; consequently, this creates confusion and utter frustration, especially for someone who is new to the concepts of corporate finance. I am so disappointed since this book is written by Brealey, London Business School, and by Myers, professor of Finance at the MIT's Sloan School of Management, both of which are products of prestigious academic institutions. Such poorly illly-proofread textbook should've never been published in the first place.
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Summary: Great Beginner's Finance Book
Review: I read this book as part of MBA program and it provided me with some key insights about Finance. It is also a great Beginner's introduction to Finance.
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Summary: Great overview
Review: This book provides a great overview of corporate finance. It does not go into tremendous detail, or excrutiating multi-page examples, and is easier to read because of it. If you need everything spelled out to the nth degree, you won't get much out of this book. It does, however, give the reader a good taste of many different topics, including a brief user-friendly sampling on real options.
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Summary: A consumer's review is only as intelligent as the consumer
Review: It's disappointing to see so many complaints about what is the most eloquent and useful fundamental corporate finance text. B&M is an excellent book... and I say this six years after my initial corp. fin. course in the Chicago MBA program. I've been working in the field now for five years in several capacities and still use this book regularly. In fact, I just finished drafting an in-house valuation course for my FORTUNE-5 employer and found myself returning to B&M repeatedly to review first principles. Corp. finance is (and should be) inaccessible to someone unwilling to study fundamental statistics, accounting and the theoretical foundation provided by Miller & Modigiliani, Markowitz, Fama, Roll et. al. Yet it's not a science; it is an art informed by rational academic inquiry and the invaluable feedback of practitioners. That's what makes it beautiful. Those without the diligence or basic numeracy to wade through the thought problems of the M&M theorems, the development of CAPM and APT, the relevance and shortcomings of DCF analysis, and guidelines for proper investment economics can't possibly expect to practice finance intelligently. And that's my biggest beef with financial professionals. So few really understand the genesis of economic value because they don't understand the fundamental arguments that B&M make so clearly. At a time when the blather of CNBC reigns, Wall Street analysts still hype EPS and stock splits, and CPAs masquerade as financial economists this text is more necessary than ever. Learn it cover to cover and you're ready to move on to further complexity in the field. One more point... the bane of MBA programs is the baying of students for "real world examples." When will students understand that it a grasp of the basic elegant theory, peer reviewed and tested, that is the foundation necessary to work intelligently in finance. Without understanding it, you're just another suit flipping switches on a powerful machine the intricacies and nuances of which you can't even begin to grasp.
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Summary: great introduction to corp. fin.!
Review: This textbook is used in many introductory corporate finance classes, including the one I'm taking. I don't understand many of the negative comments of the reviewers. This book isn't supposed to be a guide for investment bankers; it's an introduction for those new to corporate finance. To that extent, it's readable and engaging (at least as engaging as any finance book could be). And their humor? This may not be Dave Barry, but at least they have a sense of humor. How many other finance texts suggest that you may need a stiff gin and tonic after reading the section on the Black-Scholes model?
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Summary: A great way to get introduced to corporate finance!
Review: The book covers the basics and it does this with elan. For people who already know the basics, this readable work generates enough interest in the topics to keep them glued. However, to go into the depths of any specific topic, one has to go elsewhere as is expected. I found their last chapter exceptionally well written and thought provoking. This chapter lists the most important areas in finance with short paras ("What we know") and then goes on to list the areas in which more (research) work is required ("What we don't know"). (I have read about 30 % of their work and find it very interesting!)
Rating: 
Summary: terribly tedious and useless for learning
Review: I just don't know what this book is supposed to be. As a text, I really doubt if one can learn anything by reading the stories more tedious than that my grandma is ever able to tell. As a story book, I would much prefer a more entertaining one.
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Summary: Very detailed look at financial theory
Review: The authors have crafted a very intensive textbook on corporate finance. Since I read this for myself and not for a course, I have to give it a penalty for being wry when I was expecting it to be more business like. The theories seem to all be there and the principles are sound. Whether I'll ever have to make a business decision based on the topics covered, I don't know, but at least I have a solid foundation to build from.
Rating:
Summary: A good introduction to the main topics
Review: There is a great controversy about this book. From my point of view, the problem stems from reader's expectations. If you are looking for a manual introducing you on main issues of Corporate finace, this is your book (It's a workbook for introductory courses in CF). If you are looking for a deeper insight into them, this book will disappoint you. It has a poor mathematical treatment and it's overly superficial. Satisfaction = performance - expectations.
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Summary: "very funny"
Review: To be perfectly frank, I was bored to death by this book (the MBA curriculum required that we read at least two thirds of it). The main problem with the authors was that the they had a very lousy sense of humor, yet assumed that MBA's will have to lump it anyway or will be dying to read through a very plain collection of jokes, as dumb and flat as a flying hedgehog. In addition, the material is very poorly structured and most explanations are based on the gut feelings of the authors rather than some kind of mathematical proof. True, the book covers most of the finance topics (it IS comprehensive), but given the abundancy of excellent and well-organized material in today's market, I would rather make a better choice for studying finance.
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