The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Books (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Paperback)

For full product details, view this product on Amazon.

Customer Reviews of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Easily Me

4th January 2009

TERRIBLE
Not good: will I finish it? Won't I? Guess I'll have to if I want to assess fairly, but it'll be hard work. Arrogance seeps through every word and, at the end of the day, he's repeatedly hammering home one point that anyone with a degree of critical thinking will be aware of anyway.

No, I'm not going to bother finishing. Won't put myself through it and I'd recommend that you don't bother either.

Valerie Dexter

3rd January 2009

Not what I hoped
I made assumptions when I bought this book that it was about the current "Black Swan" event of the credit crunch. Instead it is more about how people do not expect the unexpected and details instances of when it has happened. I have to be honest, I was disappointed and skimmed through the book without reading it fully. The bits I read I had seen before in other publications. Maybe it got to the current events but I had already lost interest.

rjwilmsi
UK
29th December 2008

Fascinating
There are already a number of reviews that analyse this book in more detail than I could hope to do so myself, so I shall not write a long review. However, I personally found this book to be a fascinating insight into certain aspects of economics and even wider human behaviour. Whether the author is entirely right seems hardly the point -- there are clearly so many others and so many other systems which are fundamentally flawed. A fascinating read for anybody interested in economics in a wider sense and the human interpretation or quantification of risk.

Risk is not standard
Barcelona
14th December 2008

Probably right
The last book of the "enfant terrible" of finance is a must read, and I am saying that without having any links to amazon. However, while his tone works in getting his message across, it is not the best way of gaining friends among decision makers, which is a pity as many of his views are useful for managing risk.

I had the opportunity to see Nicholas Taleb in Barcelona a few years ago. Temporarily seduced by his eloquence and charm, and the fact that I got his book for free, I immediately read "Fooled by randomness". It was good to read someone that was not politically correct and that was as tough with the establishment views as the financial markets. "You are as good as your last trade", he said in his speech, which unfortunately is as true for traders as for society.

Despite recommending his book "The black swan", the first 180 pages are obsessed with explaining the difference between Mediocristan and Extremistan. For anyone that has read "Fooled by randomness", it becomes extremely repetitive, but keep going because it is Taleb. In addition, it is interesting to gain some background on the philosophers that would support his views, from Sextus Empiricus to Montaigne.

He finally gets to the point from chapter twelve onwards. There are some great sentences and good citations. I will start with the ones dedicated to financial regulators, valuable as the book was published early in 2007, so they are like a prediction of the regulators' inability to avoid the current crisis:

"regulators in the banking business are prone to a severe expert problem and they tend to condone reckless but (hidden) risk taking".

For those that hold anti capitalist views, his next prediction of the Lehman case will prove useful:
"The Achilles' heel of capitalism is that if you make corporations compete, it is sometimes the one that is most exposed to the negative Black Swan that will appear to be the most fit for survival".

It is all coherent with his statement "No one in particular is a good predictor of anything. Sorry".

Apart from the inability to plan, the book stresses, probably unwillingly, the importance of having a qualitative rather than a quantitative view of risk management. This view is perfectly expressed in his strong statement "people that worry for pennies instead of dollars can be dangerous to society."

As for modeling, he pays his tribute to Benoît Mandelbrot and fractal theory.

For other views on risk management and the current financial crisis, check my blog at []

António Manuel Baptista
Lisbon, Portugal
8th December 2008

Right on the money!
Upon watching dozens of newcasts on the recent financial meltdown, I was just impressed at the amount of so called "experts" getting it ridiculously wrong a few weeks later. I then pursued relevant literature on the subject and Taleb is right on the money: widespread epistemic arrogance! Truly enjoyable book!
The only less positive point that doesn't merit 5 star is some disorganization in the flow of ideas. I fell a smaller more incisive prose could have transmitted the thesis faster and better.
I also found the sometimes aggressive rhetoric against the "experts" gives the prose some color!. Nobody should take it personally but instead look at it with some sense of humor.