Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2504 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-03
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

International Herald Tribune
'Taleb's book deserves our attention, and our thanks'

Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph
'An idiosyncratically brilliant new book'

Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired and author of The Long Tail
'Mindblowing ... A masterpiece'

Customer Reviews

I'll keep this short...
I am shocked by the number of middling to low reviews this book is getting, so I felt compelled to add my five stars - my first ever Amazon review. While I appreciate the criticisms w.r.t. the peculiar writing style and self-indulgence, this book is superb because of the ideas it puts forth. I have to think anyone who does not like it, simply does not "get it" for whatever reason.

Disliking the book or not understanding it may not be an issue of intelligence, but one of careful reading (or the lack thereof). However, as I suspect is more likely, that to accept the main points of the book would force some people to look negatively back at years and years of their own lives, beliefs and behaviors, which is something most humans simply are not willing to do...and I offer that more as an observation than as a criticism.

Too clever by 75.987456 per cent
This is a very amusing provocation by perhaps the most subversive philosopher economist since C Northcote Parkinson. He makes a case that is hard to refute that chance and luck play a much bigger role than our narratives might suggest, and that consequent to this/subsequent to it there are always going to be anomolous events that are more or less completely unforseen, which are going to result in money blowing up, amongst other things. At a time of turbulance in global markets, this is an especially entertaining read that lays out a devastating case against conventional wisdom and above all the Bell Curve, while be laugh-out-load funny at the same time. It sets out to humble some undeserving recipients of the Nobel Prize for economics, although it can be argued that this is akin to shooting ducks in a cage.

Some key insights. Half the length and a quarter of the ego and it's a 5.
This is the archetypal curate's egg tome. A few of the concepts took my breath away. His erudition is unquestionable. No doubt, this man is smarter than me. I thought it worth struggling through.

What, struggle you say? The man would seem to have an enormous ego, enjoys self-promotion (and taking cheap shots at his antagonists). The shame is that it comes through, subtly at first, building and then, with the last chapter, ending in almost a shriek of self-righteousness.

He makes great points only to shoot himself in the foot. An example, yes, the world does over-use the normal curve. And, yes, it does so as, if you can accept "normality" there are a host of mathematical tools. And many just use normal as if it were, well, normal. Contrary to Taleb's assertion that we all use it blindly the statisticians I know all worry about their selection of models and distributions - they don't enter into analysis blindly.

I'm glad I read it. I'm off to hear him lecture. I'll probably buy another book of his. But he needs a more ruthless editor to say, "Nassim, enough, chop those pages."