The Black Swan

Hard book to review. The content is 6 star. The author makes extremely important points. But the structure is confusing, repetitive and with some parts that don't add anything besides being hostile to other authors. To top it out the author is a big a-hole (at least he doesn't pretend to be something else).

But still well worth the reading, that is how good the ideas on the book are.

One of my favourite books to use when talking to some dumb biz prophets (joking, it wouldn't be enough)

The author says this is a book of philosophy. It is also social science, polemic, psychology, statistics, biography, economics, finance, politics and a few others.
I put this book down several times because I found the author infuriating at times and I found other books easier to read so my lazy self read them instead. However, it kept working its way to the top of the pile and I'm glad I finished it. I might read the next in the series.
The Black Swans are rare events that have huge impact. The book examines how our economic and political "experts" have misled us with their models because they completely ignore Black Swans which can wipe out all the benefits accrued until the event happens, such as Wall Street crashes, wars, epidemics, oil spills,...
There are a few chapters that discuss statistics (the maths, not the numbers), but they are flagged as technical. They don't explain if you don't already know and frankly they weren't much use to the extent I did know, as they was largely polemic to say that means, standard deviations, and more don't help when in Black Swan territory.
The author is very widely read and cites many authors I like in economics, philosophy and psychology, and introduced me to some more I might pursue.

The first chapter was interesting, and I kind of understand his premise. But the book devolved into an egotistic rant. I really couldn't continue reading it.

Premise is very good. Unfortunately with the sweeping, unsupported statements insulting just about everyone, and an author who doesn't come across as very likeable, I can't recommend reading the whole thing. Read the intro, skim the middle, read the conclusion.

Conceptually interesting and if the book were required reading for a class; I'd probably be thrilled. For a leisure reading book, it falls a bit short of interesting enough to continue reading.

While the book covers some important topics and provides some solid insight, it takes far too long to make its points. Plus, the author is an arrogant blowhard who goes out of his way to disparage and insult broad classes of people. The book covers these points (among others):

Some risk domains are hugely affected by outlier events
Many self-proclaimed experts use models that diminish the importance of these events.
* These outliers cannot be predicted; the only reasonable approaches are to avoid them or to protect against them (insurance, options, etc.).

That's about all you need to know.

Read 1/3 of "Black Swan". Naive epistemological argument and anti-intellectualism cause me doubt, Amazon reviews confirm and I put it down.