I could not point to a worse book that I have read.

The author is disorganized and throws a bunch of random factoids together with an unconvincing unifying theme. The lack of clarity in thinking is reminiscent of the kind of pseudo-intellectual numerology or fact-correlating that you find in works of fiction, but it is made even worse by the fact that the author seems to have a long list of axes to grind, and fills the book with petty name calling. Why is he so obsessed with the "soviet-harvard complex"?

I have the impression that good reviews of this book must come from people who felt they were supposed to "get it", but I think there is nothing to "get" in the book, starting from the introduction of a new word "antifragile", an awkward word to describe as a single phenomenon something that remains unconvincing.

As a saving grace: the author clearly has a vast culture, and a few factoids were cute when taken individually, like his pointing out that Homer used similes to describe the color of the sea because Greek at his time did not have a word for "blue". Still, I would prefer to slog through a bulleted list of factoids than to read them in his "I'm grinding an axe" framework. Reading random Wikipedia pages would be a better use of time.

For people who know Italian, here is a fantasy of how to treat people who write such poor and pretentious works -- a film critic is forced to listen to someone reading his critique:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruv2MJQ66MU