The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Hardcover) ... Cover Art

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Hardcover)

By: Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Author)

More About this Product
List Price: $28.00
Tower Price: $15.99
You Save: $12.01 (43%)
Add to BagAdd to Bag Click to go directly to the checkout.
This item qualifies for FREE Shop N' Save Shipping for orders over $25. Check individual shipping price. *Some Restrictions Apply.
Availability: In Stock
Share This:
Add To KaboodleAdd To Kaboodle  Submit To Digg!Submit To Digg!  Share On FacebookShare On Facebook  Add to FavoritesAdd to Favorites  TwitterTwitter 

Product Description

Discover More Information About Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Author)

Run a Quick Search on "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to Browse Related Products:

Browse more products related to "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable"

Browse more products related to "Nassim Nicholas Taleb"

Review

"Writing in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne....Mr. Taleb presents a range of answers...but it's clear that he remains slightly vexed by the world he describes so vividly. Then again, beatific serenity may not be the goal here.... As Mr. Taleb warns, certitude is likely to be found only in a fool's (bell-curve) paradise, where we choose the comfort of the 'precisely wrong' over the challenge of the 'broadly correct.' Beneath Mr. Taleb's blustery rhetoric lives a surprisingly humble soul who has chosen to follow a demanding and somewhat lonely path. I wonder how many of us will have the courage to join him."

"Taleb's critique of our current pretensions to knowledge, and of our unwarranted faith in our understanding of things like risk and change, is both rigorous and convincing. And THE BLACK SWAN is a terrifically engaging book, sophisticated without being inaccessible."

"[A] provocative macro-trend tome...."

Publisher's note

A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.

Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don't know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the "impossible."

For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don't know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.

Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book--itself a black swan.

Annotation

In this irreverent, yet scholarly work, a financial trader and philosopher contends that a deeper understanding of world events comes from paying close attention to impactful statistical improbabilities he refers to as "black swans," by studying outliers rather than norms. The essay blends anecdotes and fables with a survey of historical events, social sciences, philosophy, and statistics and illustrates the need for a world view that goes well beyond the often misplaced certainty found in the bell curve. Graphs and other visual aids throughout; includes a brief glossary and an extensive footnote section.

Customer Reviews for "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Hardcover)" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Author)

Average Customer Review
5 out of 5 stars ( [1 customer review] ) 

Share your thoughts with other customers:
 [Submit your ReviewSubmit your Review] 

Most Recent Customer Reviews
5 out of 5 stars Randomness rules, March 11, 2008
By The house always wins
Im halfway through this riveting read and Ive gotta say that this book should be required reading for any investor. Whether you work in finance or are interested in your own personal finance you should listen to what Nassim Nicholas Taleb has to say. Wall Street thinks it has all the answers, but thats the Black Swan at work. Any event can be reduced and analyzed after the fact, but we will never be able to predict the unpredictable, which is what most of the major events in history have been. This book will make you look at life very differently.

Related Products
The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker

Explore More Great Tower Sales & Specials

Tower.com BOOK Sales, Promotions & Special Features

Tower.com Popular Book Wiki Articles

  • The Paperback
    Learn more information on the paperback format before choosing which type of book to purchase.
  • The E-Book
    What exactly is an "electronic book?" Learn before you buy with Tower Wiki!
  • The Audio Book
    Do you prefer to read or be read to? Learn more about this increasingly popular book format.

Interact with Tower.com