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| The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable | 
 enlarge | Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Publisher: Allen Lane
Category: Book
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  80 reviews
Sales Rank: 1219590
Media: Paperback
Edition: Australian Ed
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
ISBN: 1846140455
EAN: 9781846140457
ASIN: 1846140455
Publication Date: June 1, 2007
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| Customer Reviews:
 A rambling padded out diatribe/rant about a simple idea. May 9, 2008
13 out of 22 found this review helpful
This book could be summarised as : "Improbable stuff happens more often than people think". That's it! I find it hard to believe that this book has been edited as any editor worth his salt would have cut 90% of it; but then maybe it would not be a book but an article and so wouldn't sell? The book should carry an 'ego alert'. The author makes it quite clear that he thinks that he thinks that he is the only person who really understands how the world (universe?) works, with regard to future events, and everyone else (possibly excluding Mandelbrot) just does not get it. Perhaps he has it the wrong way around? The problem is that he does not have an alternative approach other than: 'expose yourself to [good] random events and not [bad] ones". Not really very useful is it? I'd be interested to hear what his contemporaries say!
 Tedious May 7, 2008
9 out of 14 found this review helpful
He takes 130 pages to say "History is written by the victors", using a repetitive mish-mash of terribly written fake anecdotes. This really is a problem for the book. A book half the length, with some decent editor, would have been fantastic. The book as it is repeats too much and takes too long to deliver the punch.
 Enough already....! April 16, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Sure there's an ego-trip, and the book could be edited down, and... and... and..., but Mr Taleb presents a set of points that is unarguably rarely presented, and does it with style, humour, accuracy, and effectiveness.
So read it for yourself!
I'll keep this short... April 9, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I am shocked by the number of middling to low reviews this book is getting, so I felt compelled to add my five stars - my first ever Amazon review. While I appreciate the criticisms w.r.t. the peculiar writing style and self-indulgence, this book is superb because of the ideas it puts forth. I have to think anyone who does not like it, simply does not "get it" for whatever reason.
Disliking the book or not understanding it may not be an issue of intelligence, but one of careful reading (or the lack thereof). However, as I suspect is more likely, that to accept the main points of the book would force some people to look negatively back at years and years of their own lives, beliefs and behaviors, which is something most humans simply are not willing to do...and I offer that more as an observation than as a criticism.
 Fair Point but... April 9, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Mr Taleb has a point. And working in financial markets, I can only but agree with him.
Yes, we are exposed to randomness.
Yes, it is random events that are the big market movers.
Yes, by their very nature such events are unpredictable and no amount of analysis of historical data is going to prepare us for Black Swans.
And that is it. That is the whole point of the book. Nicely summarised. We don't need the other hundreds of pages to tell us so.
Mr Taleb was a trained quant for an investment bank with aspirations of becoming a philosopher, he says so himself in the book. And there lies the problem of this book. The author mixes (with very moderate success) financial markets theory with philosophy and his own account of growing up in war torn Lebanon, producing a book that yes, it is interesting, but yes, it is also a mixed bag of vaguely related stuff that seems more like an ego boosting exercise than a serious theoretical proposition.
Fair point Mr Taleb, but where twenty pages could have worked as an academic journal type article, why write a whole book?. Money, books are scalable as mentioned at the beginning of the book itself. More money, more widespread fame, more ego.
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