I don't know if this works the same way but I read More Money Than God by Sebastian Mallaby in the middle of grad school and finally understood what people found interesting about finance.

I recommend More Money than God while we wait for the British to American translators to finish this one (I assume that’s why it comes out a week later in the states)

I've now read about half this book, and it's really good. He really got into the details of how hedge funds work and how they evolved. It's hard to imagine anyone will ever write a better book on the subject.

A fascinating history. Mallaby combines vivid description of key personalities and episodes with thoughtful discussion of the sources of advantage for different investment styles in different periods of financial history. I enthusiastically recommend this book to colleagues and students in academia and asset management.

More Money Than God shines a fascinating light on what is still the most obscure route to becoming a billionaire—the mysterious world of hedge funds. Sebastian Mallaby's rollicking tour of industry legends—famous and otherwise—tells the improbable story of A.W. Jones, the vagabond journalist-sociologist and daring anti-Nazi activist who, after the war, would create the first 'hedged' investment fund. From there, we get rip-roaring profiles of investing titans from the full-throated gambler Michael Steinhardt to the bold TmigrT George Soros and the courtly stockpicker Julian Robertson to the ill-fated intellects of LTCM and the hedge fund stars of the present day. Even as Mallaby entertains he advances an unorthodox yet compelling brief: rich as they are, hedge funds are probably the best vehicles society has for assuming risk. Any who disagree will have to contend with the evidence of the recent Wall Street collapse. If one shudders at the prospect of concentrating risk inside giant banks whose chieftains wager other people's money and cavalierly call for taxpayer bailouts then, as Mallaby points out, hedge funds are a necessary antidote.

Sebastian Mallaby takes us into the secretive world of hedge funds and the result is a wonderful story and an education in finance. The book is full of colorful characters playing high stakes' games. Throughout, with his customary intelligence, Mallaby helps us understand this important transformation of the financial industry.

When Alfred Winslow Jones started the first hedge fund, he had no idea where it would lead. Sebastian Mallaby, who must be the keenest student of hedge funds anywhere, now does—and he shares it with you in this crackling good read.