The Handbook of International Trade and Finance: The Complete Guide for International Sales, Finance, Shipping and Administration 4th Edition

great book. learned a lot about trade from it.

Billed as the complete guide for international sales, finance, shipping and administration, this book has set itself an ambitious target to be a somewhat essential guide to a broad area. Yet in this case it is not undeserved hyperbole.This is quite a slim volume, all things considered, yet surprisingly this revised (fourth) edition manages to pack a lot of actionable, useful and informative information within. This book has a great heritage, with it originally published over 40 years ago, and it has undergone extensive modification over the years. It is definitely a book focussed on doing instead of being a deeper, theoretical textbook and it arguably can serve a number of audiences well.Don’t mix up brevity with a lack of information; the reader gets a short but sufficient overview (or reminder) about a particular point and they can then always search deeper, broader information If required, such as currency risks and how to seek to mitigate them. Chapters cover subjects such as trade risks and risk assessment, payment methods, risk management, credit insurance, finance and exporting. It is incredibly easy to navigate through the book and get the nugget of information you are looking for. If that’s not enough, there’s always the excellent index to consult. A sequential read is not necessarily a bad use of your time either.Obviously this book cannot be an encyclopaedia, whereby you can search for country-specific information, so a certain level of generality is expected. That said, the less-experienced can soon get up-to-speed with relevant issues and then search out specific information from other sources. This book could also be ideal for students and those who have tangential need for such knowledge too. It is certainly not dumbed-down or over-simplified, yet the detail is patiently explained.It was a very useful book, deserving of its ambitious billing! It can be highly recommended reading for those who may need this sort of intelligence.