Tim McCarthy & BGF | Blog

The Wisdom of Finance

Written by Tim McCarthy | Oct 31, 2020 4:02:58 PM

Book of the Month by Mihir Desai

Editor’s note:  Thanks to my son, Timmy, for this my favorite read of the year so far.  I imagine that loving it depends on your perspective.  My children and I consider ourselves wisdom-seeking writers who generally hold finance in disdain.  And I know quite a few finance wizards who are not inclined to the arts.  Desai, a long-time business and law professor at Harvard makes wonderful connections between the two disciplines – from as far back as Archimedes to as current as The Simpsons.  I mean, who knew that the first examples of 529 college plans were romance savings accounts (for dowries) in 15th century Florence!

 

Excerpt:   “For [C.P.] Snow, a scientist’s ignorance of Shakespeare was no less a crime than a literary intellectual’s ignorance of the second law of thermo-dynamics”.