ISBN0470018704

I bought tons of books before this set. This is the place to start. It is written with style and humor coupled with a pace that is simple to adjust to. I judge a book by how many equations it has - more is BETTER! This set strikes a balance. The exposition is solid. It covers many specialized topics like Energy Derivatives (just a taste, mind you, but it is there to get us thinking). I guess the bottom line is this book allowed me to start thinking like a Financial Quant and less like a mathematical physicist. I have gotten much more out of the other more mathematical works because I understand how the Quants think. I still like The Physics of Finance by Ilinsky. This is more than the past Derivatives book (that makes up the first 65% of volume 1) and sets a real tone to understanding - this is just what I was looking for as I re-tool. Buy this FIRST. Read the TOC, and Get moving!

I bought this book following all the good reviews Turned out to be a heartbreaker.
1. Artificially bloated -- too many cartoons, flippant and unnecessary jokes mask the whole purpose of the book. Bloomberg pictures are totally unnecessary.
2. Very complicated equations suddenly pop up from nowhere. Author starts from a sound theory. All on a sudden he jumps to completely esoteric equiation and the whole explanation is completely lost. It would be better to dispense with the whole analysis and just give out the final formula.

I have used this book to teach a quantitative course on Fixed Income and Interest Rate Derivatives to those Master-of-Science students who are ready to enter the job market. Several of them got jobs in the quant finance industry as a result of this course. They told me what kind of questions they had on interviews, e.g., "derive the risk-neutral drift of the general HJM model." This interview question may sound intimidating to the uninitiated. But thanks to the extraordinarily simple exposition given in Wilmott, my students were able to answer this and many other such questions.

The math in this book is not complicated, if you read the book carefully. With some modest effort, you can figure out where the equations come from. Wilmott does a great job of showing only the relevant equations and hiding the less-important intermediate steps. Of course, if a reader bounces from section to section and expects to see everything clearly at the first glance, then he/she has unrealistic expectations of a quant book.

As for the comment by one of the reviewers about Wilmott's cartoons and jokes. There are quite a few of those. But you are free to ignore them if you think they distract you. It's always up to you what to read and what not to.

a good set of books. Clear , broad coverage and easy to understand but you may need some background in stochastic calculas / Ito lemma....but these concepts are all explained in the first book. One drawback is that you may find the mathematics are not rigorous enough ....but you can definite follow the suggested book list to deepen your knowledge...highly recommend to someone who need general intro to quant finance.

Just an encyclopedia, however the author's way of telling the things and his extra comments make the reading of the book a very pleasant occupation.