The book is divided into 3 parts: Part 1 talks about the market and some accounting and regulatory implications. This part is very dry and difficult to get through. For me, this is partly because of the subject matter and more the way it was written. There are lots of generalizing statements that don't seem to add value. Part 2 goes over the actual building blocks such as asset swaps, credit default swaps, credit linked notes, etc. This section was not very insightful compared to other research and credit derivatives books I have read. A much better book on the mechanics is "Credit Derivatives" by Tavakoli. Part 3 discusses "credit derivative models" but is not very deep. There are no partial differential equations or a discussion of modeling the credit process. A better book on modeling is "Derivatives" by Wilmott. As a credit derivatives professional, I would not recommend this as your first CD book. It might add incremental knowledge as your third/ fourth book. Basically, I thought that the content could have be compressed. Overall, it seemed difficult to believe that the author could be a practitioner in the field. It makes more sense when you find out that this is only 1 out of 115 books he has written on a variety of topics.