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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Paperback)

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Author) "The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull ..." (more)

3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (132 customer reviews)

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Product details

Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Penguin (28 Feb 2008)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0141034599
ISBN-13: 978-0141034591
Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.8 cm

Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (132 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 716 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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#1 in	Books > Study Books > Professional > Computing > Computer Science
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Product Description

Review

Great fun … brash, stubborn, entertaining, opinionated, curious, cajoling (Freakonomics )

An idiosyncratically brilliant new book (Sunday Telegraph )

A fascinating study of how we are regularly taken for suckers by the unexpected (Guardian )

Like the conversation of a raconteur ... hugely enjoyable - compelling (Financial Times )

Confirms his status as a guru for every would-be Damien Hirst, George Soros and aspirant despot (Sunday Times )

In the tradition of The Wisdom of Crowds and The Tipping Point (Time )

John Kay, Financial Times

`Hugely enjoyable - compelling'

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. Read the first page

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economics(18)

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decision making(1)

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Customer Reviews

132 Reviews

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(24)

Average Customer Review

3.3 out of 5 stars (132 customer reviews)

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars In a nutshell: insightful but rambling, 19 Jun 2009

By	Adam Schaffer "adamschaffer" (London) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There are many reviews here already, so I'll keep this short:

- Content: makes insightful points on limitations of our knowledge, human temptation to identify false trends and narratives, follow herd mentality, blindly follow 'experts', and so forth. He calls this 'skeptical empiricism'.

- Style: long-winded and rambling, skipping from personal stories from Lebanon, to parables intended to represent the author, to dull discussions on history of mathematics. I didn't mind it, but some readers hate it.

- Author: massively arrogant and up himself. Thinks he's had the best idea since sliced bread. He's got a good idea, but he's not the first or the only one, just the one with the biggest mouth.

- Other reads: there are better books out there on similar subjects. John Kay (of the FT) writes essays from a similar position, much more concisely and more to the point.

Hope that helps!

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344 of 380 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars right, interesting, but extremely irritating, 28 Nov 2007

By	Dean Swift (Hertfordshire) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Hardcover)

Taleb has one good idea, a great idea even, and an infinite number of ways of talking about it. It is essentially the same idea as his last book, Fooled by Randomness: namely that life does not behave with regularity. Those who think it does, he says, will always be tripped up by the unexpected. Black Swan extends that idea, beyond the financial markets he concentrated on in Randomness, to just about all walks of life. He is a magpie for anecdote and stray pieces of supporting evidence wherever he can find them. He calls all this 'skeptical empiricism'.
The qualification is that his big idea is not original, though his numerous examples do help bring home its ubiquity. More problematically, he overstates its usefulness. For when it comes to calling your next move, the unpredictable and the unexpected are, by definition, not things we can anticipate. And though he is right that in the long run there will undoubtedly by high impact improbably events, it is also true, as Keynes said, that in the long run we are all dead: organising your life on the principle that something radical might come along doesn't solve the everyday problem of what to next.
In short, he exaggerates his own insight and the authority it gives him. That's a wicked irony, for the chief target of his ire is those with an exaggerated sense of insight and control over their lives.
Oh, and the tone... Taleb wants to be seen as a radical iconoclast. Every sentence drips righteousness and often irritation. He is the strutting, impatient sage, the rest of us blinkered morons. Apparently he doesn't like his editors trying to change this. A word of advice to the author: if you want your advice heeded, don't shout and sneer at your audience. For this reason, an interesting thesis, but in the end a wearisome read.

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97 of 109 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars enjoyable but sometimes irritating , 31 July 2008

By	Janie "Jane O'Neill" (Brighton, England) - See all my reviews

This book is for most part engagingly written and full of entertaining stories and provocative ideas. It makes you reconsider things you take for granted in life and reevaluate your own perspective of the future. But at times I couldn't help feeling that the author was just too full of himself, too pleased with his own ideas and too disparaging towards other people's. Not only does this create a negative feeling but it also works against the book's objectivity. How can a theory be impartial and objective when its author is so in love with himself and his own ideas? Nevertheless this book is a very rewarding read.

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