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| The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable | 
 enlarge | Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $27.00
Buy New: $15.49
You Save: $11.51 (43%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $10.89
Avg. Customer Rating:  (361 reviews)
Sales Rank: 130
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
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
Release Date: April 17, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 More Wall Street Propaganda But It Sounds Good At Cockail Parties. October 31, 2008
2 out of 9 found this review helpful
This high falutin' author has much to say, but in the end says nothing.
Just randomly turn a few pages to obtain nice little quotes that sound good during CNBC interviews. The academics can use this book to justify creating another college course to charge kids $10k to "learn about". Or you can spout this crap at cocktail parties to appear intellectual.
This book is so pompous and overly-serious that it appears to be a classic American goof. Kinda-like Orson Wells doing "War of the Worlds", Minnesota electing Jesse Ventura, or McCain bringing sexy-momma Palin into the mix.
Read it and the jokes on you.
 If you have hip boots you may learn something October 29, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
I labored over a 2 or 3 star rating but ended up at a 2 since I decided to punish hubris in the wake of the Wall Street scandals.
The book is an interesting read but you have to keep an open mind and get past the author's incredible arogance and condescention. He basically tells you that you and everyone you know are stupid because you do not think the way he thinks you should think. Some chapters have some merit and when he is not so busy telling you how dumb you are, he can make his point effectively.
One problem I had was the idea that many of his "Black Swan" events were actually unexpected. Events like 9/11 were actually predicted, not least of all from Ramszi Yousef, the man who performed the Feb 26, 1993 attack who said they would come back to finish the job. The 9/11 Commission report listed basically 10 things that pointed to the attack which if performed would have prevented it. Five were in the Clinton Administration and five in the Bush Administration (although to be fair, the Clinton Administration had a lot more time to actually learn the threat and do something about it since the first attack happened on their watch as well).
I have heard others say that the author's previous book was more helpful without the biting sarcasm and self promotion.
 Open your mind October 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is a path to open your mind to new ways of thinking. Anyone who deals with thinking should read it. Excellent book!
 a must-read but could use a Bill Bryson make-over October 24, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
You must have keen interests in economics, statistics and philosophy if you want to enjoy this book. If you do however, this book seems elementary to surviving, or putting it more positively, doing well in this fast and treacherous world. You have to illustrate a lot of the theory with practical situations in your daily professional or other life to get the point or to make it interesting sometimes. Some of the author's examples are poorly chosen; the "black swan" itself for instance: what was the big deal about the discovery of that bird? Certainly nothing compared to the dramatic events the black swan is supposed to stand for. WW I is another poor example of a black swan; the starting event was a surprise, but all the plans were ready. In summary: the book is 100% original and added-value, but could use a Bill Bryson make-over
Shocked to discover there really *was* an editor, it doesn't show October 16, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
For being yet another Big Idea book, this book is so horribly organized and the idea so incompletely explained that it utterly fails to impart much besides a few simplistic mental models that would have taken about two pages to summarize.
The best part of this book is the concept of the title, which is unfortunately something that he never completely fleshes out in a way that you can usefully apply. Instead, "NNT" spends a ton of time talking about the history of many "slighted" historical thinkers, a club he proudly includes himself in. In order to elevate the status of these maligned heroes, he spends great effort tearing down most commonly recognized philosophers, economists, writers, etc.
There were the kernels of some interesting ideas in here, which never got polished. The editor utterly failed to help focus the text and explain things in a coherent way. As an example, there are long diatribes about the plight of his ancestral home, many jokes about the French, spiteful slurs against Nobel laureates, especially in economics, and a very ironic soapbox speech about the uselessness of editors that "distill one's message until it has lost all value and consistency." Funny, that. We get that you think the Bell Curve is a Great Intellectual Fraud. Fine, fine, but get to the point already and stop ranting like a blogger.
I agree with other reviewers also about the narcissism and delusions of intellectual grandeur. But my main complaint is that the practicality of the distinction between white, black, and gray swans was never really painted clearly. For example, it would have been really interesting to know the details of how he applied the Big Idea to the real-world financial trading he supposedly is really successful at. He doesn't seem interested to divulge the details. If a magician won't reveal his tricks and this book is an essay about NNT's "magic trick" that he doesn't tell you the secret of using, then why buy this book?
This is my first encounter with Taleb's work, and I have to say that I'm pretty unlikely to read any of his other stuff, it being so negatively colored by this waste of time.
By the way, it's not as long as it seems -- the back 20% or so is all references and bibliography. The best feature of this book perhaps, not because I used it, but because it was a welcome end when I thought there was still 100 pages of rant left to endure.
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