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Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance
By Perry Merhling
From Publishers Weekly
In a 30-year career equally divided between academics (University of Chicago) and Wall Street, Black contributed seminal papers in almost every area of finance and many areas
of economics, but few were published in major peer-reviewed journals and many were
never published at all.
He spent most of his time alone in a room thinking and writing,
was uncomfortable in large groups, an undistinguished lecturer and famously eccentric in
ways more irritating than amusing or dramatic.
All of this gives Barnard economist
Mehrling (The Money Interest and the Public Interest) his work cut out for him. He has
responded with a book that, beyond providing the facts of Black's life, serves as the best
currently available general history of the revolution in finance that took place between
1960 and 1990: the essential ideas and disputes are explained clearly, with a minimum of
mathematics and jargon, and the relationships among the leading innovators are explored
concisely but in depth.
As far as Black goes, Mehrling gives a clear picture of his
working life and reveals the strong family ties and close personal friendships of a man
often thought to have been emotionless. On the whole, Mehrling's book is essential
reading for anyone interested in the development of modern finance or the life of an
idiosyncratic creative genius. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights
reserved.
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