One valuation book stands out as withstanding the test of time among investors and students of financial markets: Investment Valuation. That book discusses how best to value companies and securities. Damodaran's other books on valuation are directed primarily at analysts and practitioners, whose interests lie primarily in the practice of valuation. Consequently, they are filled with detail that are useful to trained financial analysts, but not to individual investors. The average investor has a less intense need for valuation details and is more interested in learning valuation basics that he or she can apply quickly to investments-and to fundamental research reports they read about companies. In The Little Book of Valuation, Prof. Aswath Damodaran will distil the fundamentals of valuation (without glossing over or ignoring key components) and develop models that investors can understand easily and use quickly (with relatively few inputs). In the process, he will aim to cover all of the different approaches - intrinsic or discounted cash flow valuation, multiples or relative valuation and even some elements of real option valuation. Readers will not only value a company quickly but will also be able to look at valuations done by others or equity research reports and discern whether they make sense. Damodaran will complement the book with iVal, an iPhone/iPad app that makes understanding stock valuations easy and intuitive.

Aswath Damodaran is Professor of Finance at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. He has been the recipient of numerous awards for outstanding teaching, including the NYU university-wide Distinguished Teaching Award, and was named one of the nation's top business school teachers by BusinessWeek in 1994. He has written or coedited numerous books, including Damodaran on Valuation, Investment Valuation, Corporate Finance, Investment Management, Investment Philosophies, and Applied Corporate Finance (all published by Wiley), as well as The Dark Side of Valuation, Investment Fables, and Strategic Risk Taking.