I can see why this is the standard textbook in the field. It really is remarkably good; interesting, witty, with many well-chosen real-world examples.

While I'm mildly interested in the subject, the point of reading this was to acquire enough background material to be able to read sensibly about derivatives which, in turn, is to acquire the background knowledge to read about the stochastic calculus (things like martingales) used in high end mathematical finance. The ultimate hope is that this mathematics may give me useful insights into the mathematics of QFT. We shall see. ( )