A wonderful mix of philosophy, theory, and practicality – Sinclair's textbook is a must-read for anyone embarking on a career related to volatility. Unlike typical finance textbooks that spend pages dazzling you with maths of dubious practicality, Sinclair cuts through the fluff to hit the most important topics, while linking to relevant academic research in the footnotes.

• Philosophy: modelling entails transformation to a slower-moving (i.e more understandable) parameter space
• Theory: the technicals of removing bias from rolling (overlapping) windows when calculating volatility
• Practicality: hard to choose just one here. Liked the chapters on bet sizing (particularly the effects of parameter misestimation on Kelly betting), the explainers of VIX/ETNs, etc. But the Life Cycle of a Trade is gold – very hard to get that kind of insight outside of an actual desk!