The Black Swan
A black swan is a highly improbable event characterized by its unpredictability, the massive impact it carries, and the universal notion to make its occurrence appear less random than it actually was. Classic, startling, and comprehensive, The Black Swan focuses on the extreme consequences of these rare outlier events. For renowned scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything in the world, from the rise of religions to personal events. He argues that people are unable to truly assess opportunities for we confine our thinking to the inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, with his polymathic command, Taleb provides simple gimmicks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.
“[A book] that altered modern thinking.”
— The Times (London)
“A masterpiece.”
— Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired, author of The Long Tail
“Idiosyncratically brilliant.”
— Niall Ferguson, Los Angeles Times
“The Black Swan changed my view of how the world works.”
— Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate
“[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne. . . . We eagerly romp with him through the follies of confirmation bias [and] narrative fallacy.”
— The Wall Street Journal
“Hugely enjoyable—compelling . . . easy to dip into.”
“Engaging . . . The Black Swan has appealing cheek and admirable ambition.”