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Rating: 
Summary: an excellent introduction
Review: Absolutely fantastic introduction to Financial Engineering. The first thing that strikes me about this gem is that it is very readable: the authors' writing style is straight-forward and concise, and at the same time manages to explain the concepts very well: no lecturing, no wordiness. There is a prevailing pattern of presentation to ideas: introduction, example, theorem, proof, excercise, and it works out wonderfully. The text is well integrated with equations. Well worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: A great introduction to financial engineering
Review: This is a great book at a great price. As an undegraduate student reading for a degree in mathematics with financial management, I've found this textbook to be of great help in the derivative securities and portfolio theory modules I am doing this year. There is a nice balance between examples, theory, and exercises (all complete with solutions). The examples and excercises have been particularly helpful to me - they don't just illustrate and consolidate the various topics, but most importantly prepare the ground for the exciting new ideas to come. Compared to other books recommended for my mudules in mathematical finance, this is by far the most readable. What seems to be daunting mathematical theory full of unnesessary abstractions in the other books I have tried, this one has somehow managed to appear easy, indeedd almost obvious when you come to think of it (just look at pricing American options, for example!).There are a few typos in various places and it is well worth visiting the book's web page at www.springeronline.com/1-85233-330-8 (and click on the accompanying website) for a list of corrections. At the same place, I have also located some nice Excel files that can be downloaed, with numerical solutions to case studies and excercises in the more advanced chapters - these are neatly designed and are of great help in following the text. I just wish there was even more material covered in similar Excel files. In all respects, a great book this, and well worth spending under 20 quid.
Rating: 
Summary: A very good book
Review: This is a very good book for teaching financial mathematics. The only snag is the absence of Black-Scholes equations. The discussion of Portfolio analysis is an excellent addition.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Starting Place for Financial Software Developers
Review: While shy on the mathematics for the would-be-quants, this treatment of mathematical financial is way beyond the mundane coverage typically seen in MBA-level texts, is widely accessible, and very well written.
The other reviewer's comments on Black-Scholes are wrong. Chapter eight is entirely devoted to the Black-Scholes formula and models and Chapter nine is a study in its applications (hedging the greeks, etc...)
Smarter than many of the more high-level math texts (Joshi, Willmott, Neftci, etc...) in that it is both an introduction to the financial topics as well as the mathematics and links the intuitive (and counter-intuitive) observations of how financial instruments should behave with the formal and mathematical discussion of how they really do behave.
Not nearly as good in the math as the others mentioned.
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