The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0141034599 ISBN 13: 9780141034591

Casa editrice: Penguin, 2008

The phenomenal international bestseller that shows us how to stop trying to predict everything - and take advantage of uncertainty

What have the invention of the wheel, Pompeii, the Wall Street Crash, Harry Potter and the internet got in common? Why are all forecasters con-artists? Why should you never run for a train or read a newspaper?

This book is all about Black Swans: the random events that underlie our lives, from bestsellers to world disasters. Their impact is huge; they're impossible to predict; yet after they happen we always try to rationalize them.

'Taleb is a bouncy and even exhilarating guide ... I came to relish what he said, and even develop a sneaking affection for him as a person' Will Self, Independent on Sunday

'He leaps like some superhero of the mind' Boyd Tonkin, Independent

'Funny, quirky and thought-provoking ... confirms his status as a guru for every would-be Damien Hirst, George Soros and aspirant despot' John Cornwell, Sunday Times

'Idiosyncratically brilliant' Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph

'Great fun ... brash, stubborn, entertaining, opinionated, curious, cajoling' Stephen J. Dubner, Co-Author of Freakonomics

Recensione:

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)

L'autore:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an uncompromizing no-nonsense thinker for our times. He has spent his life immersing himself in problems of luck, uncertainty, probability, and knowledge, and he has led three high-profile careers around his ideas, as a man of letters, as a businessman-trader, and as a university professor and researcher. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University's School of Engineering. He is the author of the 4-volume INCERTO (Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and The Bed of Procrustes). Taleb refuses all awards and honours as they debase knowledge by turning it into competitive sports.