Students of the actuarial profession has no choice in acquiring this book as it's contents are part of the SOA syllabus. The coverage is broad and most essential topics in actuarial modelling are covered. Yet, in many instances it lacks imagination: it can become too obsessed with formulas and number crunching rather than concentrate on conveying the intuition behind the formulas. Another problem with dealing solely with the mathematical models behind insurance is that one could read the entire book and still not have a clue behind some of the most relevant real world insurance problems (e.g. adverse selection, moral hazard, etc). One would very likely have to read other materials to cover the economics behind insurance.