Damodaran is a gifted teacher and in his books is able as well to explain the concepts and techniques of valuation in an understandable manner. The book serves mainly for readers who want to get a comprehensible (and to a certain degree comprehensive) overview of the topics with selected in-depth discussions and it is quite 'readable'.

The Cons:

The book is not new at all, as about 90% is a copy of his earlier book 'Investment Valuation'. The only real difference is the selection of the examples used and the financial and market data are more current compared to his other book from 1994. It seems that the marketing department of the publisher saw an opportunity to sell a 'new' book to the new class of technology investors. However, the occasional comments of which valuation topics are specific to technology companies could be summarized on a couple of pages.
The book is good for giving a comprehensible overview but does not go very much into depth.
Effectively, it's the earlier book 'Investment Valuation' recycled with a new title and new cover, still a good book but not new at all.

As for the reviewer who compained that Damodaran doesn't do enough work in real option theory: Damodaran says in this book exactly what needs to be said about real option theory: that it has very limited applications (which is not to say that it is not revolutionary within those limited applications) and that the push to broaden the use of real option valuation beyond its traditional applications can more often than not constitute misuse and abuse of the models. Not every investment contains options, and not all of those options have value, to paraphrase Damodaran himself. Damodaran doesn't ignore real options, of course: he calls them contingency claims (as they technically should be called) and dedicates a chapter to explaining there use and abuse. Using real options, when it comes down to it, involves building and solving partial differential equations based on stochastic processes. As any actuary or financial analyst could confirm, teaching stochastic processes presupposes a very strong math base and still would require an entire book. Damodaran did the right thing by limiting himself to a single, illustrative chapter.

The best part of this book is that thanks to Damodaran's congenial and accessible ability to write, this book can be read and prove valuable to people with a variety of needs. As an MBA student this book has been invaluable. But I even gave this book as a gift to my brother, a decidedly non-financial person, to replace his countless "How to Invest" books sitting on his bookshelf.

It contains concepts and technicalities, such as CFROI, PEG or how to include management options in valuation, not found in other books -though I rather that he expanded more on this-.

The only drawbacks I find in Damodaran books are the limited attention to real-world balance sheet problems one may face (ie: effects of Minority Interests in valuation) and the no-mention policy for valuing banks. In this category, Copeland's Valuation book is better. Of course, this particular book is only meant to value tech firms !!!

If you want a really in-depth valuation book, just buy it.