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Books : The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
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Binding: Hardcover EAN: 9780713999952 ISBN: 0713999950 Label: Allen Lane Manufacturer: Allen Lane Number Of Pages: 400 Publication Date: May 03, 2007 Publisher: Allen Lane Studio: Allen Lane Sales Rank: 96547 Related Items:
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - FIRST IMPRESSIONSNot good: will I finish it? Won't I? Guess I'll have to if I want to assess fairly, but it'll be hard work. Arrogance seeps through every word and, at the end of the day, he's repeatedly hammering home one point that anyone with a degree of critical thinking will be aware of anyway. Rating:  - Not what I hopedI made assumptions when I bought this book that it was about the current "Black Swan" event of the credit crunch. Instead it is more about how people do not expect the unexpected and details instances of when it has happened. I have to be honest, I was disappointed and skimmed through the book without reading it fully. The bits I read I had seen before in other publications. Maybe it got to the current events but I had already lost interest. Rating:  - FascinatingThere are already a number of reviews that analyse this book in more detail than I could hope to do so myself, so I shall not write a long review. However, I personally found this book to be a fascinating insight into certain aspects of economics and even wider human behaviour. Whether the author is entirely right seems hardly the point -- there are clearly so many others and so many other systems which are fundamentally flawed. A fascinating read for anybody interested in economics in a wider sense and the human interpretation or quantification of risk. Rating:  - Probably rightThe last book of the "enfant terrible" of finance is a must read, and I am saying that without having any links to amazon. However, while his tone works in getting his message across, it is not the best way of gaining friends among decision makers, which is a pity as many of his views are useful for managing risk. I had the opportunity to see Nicholas Taleb in Barcelona a few years ago. Temporarily seduced by his eloquence and charm, and the fact that I got his book for free, I immediately read "Fooled by randomness". It was good to read someone that was not politically correct and that was as tough with the establishment views as the financial markets. "You are as good as your last trade", he said in his speech, which unfortunately ... Read More: Rating: - Right on the money!Upon watching dozens of newcasts on the recent financial meltdown, I was just impressed at the amount of so called "experts" getting it ridiculously wrong a few weeks later. I then pursued relevant literature on the subject and Taleb is right on the money: widespread epistemic arrogance! Truly enjoyable book! The only less positive point that doesn't merit 5 star is some disorganization in the flow of ideas. I fell a smaller more incisive prose could have transmitted the thesis faster and better. I also found the sometimes aggressive rhetoric against the "experts" gives the prose some color!. Nobody should take it personally but instead look at it with some sense of humor. |
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