The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

The book deserves attention, not necessarily for the qualities of the writer, but for introducing a biased opinion in the world that was supposed to pertain only to "un-opinionated" academics. Worth reading if you have an open mind, no matter of the direction chosen in career and life. It gives another type of perspective on improbability than the establishment.

I'll save you the trouble and the money. Here's the message (if that's what you'd call it): Crazy things happen...be prepared...if you can. There, aren't you happy you didn't waste any piece of your life reading this book, like I did?

Taleb's explanation/rationalization of risk and how it has failed to be fully accounted for in the financial markets is startling. Going forward, as the current financial markets meltdown is (hopefully) resolved, all investors will want to consider Taleb's thoughts in developing strategies that will account for the the inevitable and unforeseeable outliers, Taleb's Black Swans, that are few but impossible to avoid. Failure to plan for the outliers reduces investment and money management to high stakes roulette.

There are certainly many fine points in the book to argue and Taleb lacks neither ego, humor or irony in his writing. This is not a technical manual for economists, but a narrative intended for the layman to illustrate the effects of risk, seen and unforeseen.

The importance of the book is the big picture concepts that are developed and their impact, which are conveyed meaningfully and often colorfully. Nit picking the finer points is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

This is a great volume to help understand where all our money went and how to minimize the possibility of a replay.

Start with Fooled by Randomness (Taleb's first book), The Logic of Life - similar idea (less business oriented not as technical) and Against the The Gods. Then take on The Black Swan. An amazing book (Thank you Taleb for allowing us to leverage for $25 all the hours and brain energy you put into making these concepts cohesive - high ROI). This publication offers facinating insight into how much of what we don't know about what we don't know can/may/will affect us and helps hedge against the unknown - all the while respecting that there will always be an element of the unknown that simply can not be predicted. And the impact of the highly improbable lurks. Irreverant and written with humor it's surprisingly readable for its heady content. You will be changed.

The only thing I didn't care for was the title of the book. I get its application, but I think there could have been a more applicable name - but who the hell am I to say?

After you're done with The Black Swan, if you're musically inclined, go grab This is Your Brain on Music - these authors must meet. Different industries - interesting applications to ideas from both.

Just keep reading! Literacy = Knowledge = Empowerment = Peace

1. The prose was EXTREMELY BLOATED. He took 5 sentences where two would have done just fine. One gets a sense of deja vu here. Ayn Rand is also someone who took at least 3x as much space as she needed to say anything. It is amazing that after all that space, she still didn't have that much to say. Even after all this, it appears that Taleb didn't have that much to say. I guess that you can't use book sales to predict how good/ useful a book will be. (But I guess we already knew that. Look at Danielle Steele.)

2. In continuing with the point about how long winded this book is: Was it really necessary to go on for *34* (!) pages before introducing the thesis of the book?

3. He could have taken some lessons from Malcolm Gladwell in how to pull the book together. (As in, how to take some observations that may not have been too interesting by themselves and connect them in some interesting way that makes a good book.)

4. The book, by rights, was about a 175-200 page book. (Did I mention how annoying it is to have to search through a book for the point?)

Good points:

1. The author really does have some interesting material. The only problem is that the reader has to search through SO MUCH rubbish to be able to find it.

2. There are a few witty quips here. Not many, but a few that had me laughing out loud.

Overall, this is definitely not worth more than a secondhand purchase. And if you are someone that is very judicious in using your time (=not searching through a book for the point), then this is not the book for you.