Finance is everywhere, from our retirement assets to our investments in housing and education. Finance is still intimidating to many smart people. Key ideas like insurance, leverage, risk, value creation, mergers and bankruptcies are shrouded in mystery for the majority of people who spend their days on Main Street.

We can all benefit from a better understanding of how markets work. Finance is often taught in ways that are dry, technical or jargon-filled.

Mihir Desai entered. He is a professor at Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School. In his book. The world of risk and return is the subject of The Wisdom of Finance. Professor Desai explores the ideas of finance from a humanities perspective. He will teach you the most important financial concepts using stories from books. There is Pride and Prejudice. The Maltese Falcon and the Bible.

This isn’t a personal finance course.

It will be a tour of the key ideas in finance. By the end of this course, you will be able to converse about key financial concepts, unpack financial stories in the news, and recognize financial ideas as they show up in everyday life. The core practices of finance are all around us and have been ingrained in our stories for centuries.

To find the direct link to Mihir’s Harvard course, please go to the instructor’s bio and website.