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 enlarge | Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy Used: $8.99
You Save: $17.96 (67%)
New (49) Used (47) Collectible (1) from $8.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  328 reviews
Sales Rank: 149
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.4
ISBN: 1400063515
Dewey Decimal Number: 003.54
EAN: 9781400063512
ASIN: 1400063515
Publication Date: April 17, 2007
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Condition: Great Buy!! Like New Book...5 Star Seller!!
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| Customer Reviews:
 What a bloated and wasted work August 15, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I got interested in this book in part because the topic interested me and in part because I have seen far too many random people including boston cab drivers and random passerby reading this book. I am uncertain why this book ever caught on, as it is written without any style and with long rambling bits as well as poorly executed stylistic techniques. It seems to me at least, that the success of this book is in and of itself a very negative black swan.
First, I want to take intellectual umbrage with some of the events Mr. Taleb describes as unpredictable. The book got of to a bad start by immediately sighting 9-11 as an unpredictable event. Unfortunately, this is clearly not the factual case as there were many precedents in the realm of plane high jackings and much evidence including the bin laden determined to strike the U.S memo of August 2001 to suggest an imminent attack. The problems with our intelligence communities were quite many including information sharing flaws and execution errors especially in collaboration, but the threats we faced were never completely unpredictable. Of course, Taleb is correct when he says that conventional thinking was at fault for many of our intelligence mistakes, however, the problem at least in regard to national security ( a field Taleb claims to respect later in the book) is that we mostly deal with limited resources to respond to near infinite quantities of threats. Moreover, the conventional and probable ( the assassination of JFK in Dallas) has just as much impact as the highly improbable. This is not exactly the black swan situation Taleb speaks of and it seems that at least when it comes to policy direction, his theory is lacking.
Stylistically, this book is filled with poor choices such as the french baiting so in vogue when this book came out which now is just utterly irritating, the use of hypothetical or imaginary cases rather than interesting real world example, the continuous referral back to past chapters through the use of their numbers, as if Taleb expects his tome to be judiciously memorized, a curious portion in which Taleb practically gushes about specific philosophers or mathematicians such as mandelbrot ( very awkward) and the continuous assertions of the author that he is different and unique from everyone around. The content of this book gets lost in a muddled layer of arrogance and repetition. The point of this book could much more easily be told with concrete examples and less narcissism and redundancy.
 A philosophy from statistics August 14, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a very fun book to read. Taleb is one of those polymath writers who are totally unashamed to bloviate and utterly convinced he's right (and is willing to call Nobel laureates frauds). I give him credit for making statistics engaging to read and a philosophy to boot.
My one criticism is his chapter on narrative fallacies. One of Taleb's arguments is that we should avoid seeing patterns in the past and that the past is almost entirely unexplainable and irreducible with respect to causation. He then applies this to history. I think Taleb's dead wrong here. It is absurd to think of history without thinking about causation and narrative. History is not naked chronology, as Taleb seems to think, but understanding reasons, causes. People don't want to know what happened, but why it happened. This is a valid question! IMHO, Taleb's argument about randomness and skepticism applies only to economic variables. And it's a good point. In sum, I thought Taleb's romp through the world of economics and forecasting was fun and thought-provoking.
Shoot the editor August 12, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
The obvious premises of this book could have been related in 50 pages or less. I agree with those who commented that the author is self-engrossed. I've never wanted to skim-read a book more than this one.
 useless pages are more than 85% of the book August 3, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I bought the book because it is on best selling list, 4 stars and an interesting topic. However, quite a disappoinment. The black swan idea is quite refreshing but it is revealed completed in the first 20 pages. The rest are just repeative garbage.
I guess the author needs to make a living too and he is obviously paid by the number of pages. He simply turned a good article into a over-weight book.
 A good point, but Taleb overdoes it July 30, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Nassim Taleb has written a very enthusiastic book, and provides some very tasteful food for thought. The problem is, Taleb himself is far too pleased with his own work.
Talebs confidence in his own ideas helps him write a book which is easy and fun to read. For an economist, interested in the philosophical background of the science, he offers plenty of very interesting references. I will most certainly dig more into the thoughts of Karl Popper and Benoit Mandelbrot.
But Taleb's confidence also helps him make several rather banal mistakes. His main adversary is the statistician Gauss and his normal distribution. Taleb is right that many economists and financial analysts rely far too much on normal distribution. But figure 7 on page 238 reveals that Taleb himself does not understand the concept pretty good: "..as your sample size increases, the observed average will present itself with less and less dispersion".
His confidence also makes Taleb jump to conclusions and make banal errors (the French Maginot Line, the main line of defence built in the 1930s, was not built where the Germans attacked France in World War One). Taleb even goes in his own primary trap: the confirmation bias. Every little thing happening by chance is counted as evidence of his Black Swan theory. But the story of penicillin is famous just because it was sensational, not because it is the normal way of making major medical breakthroughs.
It is probably not worthwhile to read this book, although there are grains of gold in it. The book is written in the spring of 2007, before subprime. In a footnote Taleb is writing about the risk of Fannie Mae: it "seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite." Touche!
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