Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

The Bed of Procrustes

A condensed guide to life, Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Bed of Procrustes is an invaluable collection of aphorisms to help you navigate the modern world. 
 
Second edition, revised and expanded 
 
Why are we so often unwilling to accept that life is unpredictable? In this brilliant book Nassim Nicholas Taleb distils his idiosyncratic wisdom to demolish our illusions, contrasting the classical values of courage, elegance and erudition against modern philistinism and phoniness. Only by accepting what we don't know, he shows, can we see the world as it really is.

Like Twain and Wilde before him, Taleb eats paradoxes for breakfast... The aphorism is Taleb to a tee. It showcases his wit and learning, and provides ways to fillet his enemies. All his usual suspects are present to be corrected: bankers, fools, politicians, journalists... Present, too, are his heroes: the curious, the intellectually anarchistic, the idle philosopher

[A] quirky, entertaining collection of aphorisms, covering everything from the web to the injuriousness of doing too much work... a wry, often hila&shy;rious glimpse

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an uncompromizing no-nonsense thinker for our times. He has spent his life immersing himself in problems of luck, uncertainty, probability, and knowledge, and he has led three high-profile careers around his ideas, as a man of letters, as a businessman-trader, and as a university professor and researcher. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University's School of Engineering. He is the author of the 4-volume INCERTO (Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and The Bed of Procrustes). Taleb refuses all awards and honours as they debase knowledge by turning it into competitive sports.

In a climate when iconoclasm is the smartest intellectual stance - whether against bankers, traders, politicians, the energy industry, or journalists - one of today's most prominent rabble-rousers gives his quick-witted and snappy guide to questioning the status quo. 
 
With characteristic panache and brio, Taleb uses aphorisms to condense his rambunctious ideas and style. This is the perfect reference for anyone searching for the right questions to ask.

Things that Gain from Disorder

Antifragile

'Really made me think about how I think' - Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West 
 
Tough times don't last. Tough people do. 
 
In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. Here Taleb stands uncer&shy;tainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resil&shy;ient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. 
 
Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls antifragile are things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. 
 
Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb's message is revolutionary: the antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it. 
 
'The hottest thinker in the world' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

A guru for every would-be Damien Hirst, George Soros and aspirant despot

Nassim Taleb, in his exasperating but compelling book Antifragile, praises "things that gain from disorder" - people, policies and institutions designed to thrive on volatility, instead of shattering in the encounter with it

More than just robust or flexible, it actively thrives on disruption

Modern life is akin to a chronic stress injury. And the way to combat it is to embrace randomness in all its forms. . .  Taleb is the great seer of the modern age

Something antifragile actively thrives under the impact of the unexpected...to embrace randomness rather than trying to control it

Enduring volatility is one thing; what about benefiting from it? That is what Taleb calls 'antifragility' and he thinks that it is the ultimate model to aspire to - for individuals, financial institutions, even nations. . . May well capture a quality that you have long aspired to without having quite known quite what it is. . . I saw the world afresh

Taleb takes on everything from the mistakes of modern architecture to the dangers of meddlesome doctors and how overrated formal education is. . . . An ambitious and thought-provoking read . . . highly entertaining

This is a bold, entertaining, clever book, richly crammed with insights, stories, fine phrases and intriguing asides. . . . I will have to read it again. And again

[Taleb] writes as if he were the illegitimate spawn of David Hume and Rev. Bayes, with some DNA mixed in from Norbert Weiner and Laurence Sterne. . . . Taleb is writing original stuff-not only within the management space but for readers of any literature-and . . . you will learn more about more things from this book and be challenged in more ways than by any other book you have read this year. Trust me on this

What sometimes goes unsaid about Taleb is that he's a very funny writer. Taleb has a finely tuned BS detector, which he wields throughout the book to debunk pervasive yet pernicious ideas. . . . Antifragility isn't just sound economic and political doctrine. It's also the key to a good life

At once thought-provoking and brilliant, this book dares you not to read it

The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Fooled by Randomness

Everyone wants to succeed in life. But what causes some of us to be more successful than others? Is it really down to skill and strategy - or something altogether more unpredictable? 
 
This book is the bestselling sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. It is all about luck: more precisely, how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the markets - we hear an entrepreneur has 'vision' or a trader is 'talented', but all too often their performance is down to chance rather than skill. It is only because we fail to understand probability that we continue to believe events are non-random, finding reasons where none exist. 
 
'One of the smartest books of all time' Fortune 
 
 'An iconoclastic tour de force ... nothing escapes his Exocets' Evening Standard 
 
 'Brilliant' John Kay 
 
 'Excellent and thought-provoking ... an entertaining book' Financial Times 
 
 'Wall Street's principal dissident' Malcolm Gladwell

'One of the smartest books of all time' Fortune 
 
 Everyone wants to succeed in life. But what causes some of us to be more successful than others? Is it really down to skill and strategy - or something altogether more unpredictable? This book is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. 
 
 It is all about luck: more precisely, how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. 
 
 Nowhere is this more obvious than in the markets - we hear an entrepreneur has 'vision' or a trader is 'talented', but all too often their performance is down to chance rather than skill. It is only because we fail to understand probability that we continue to believe events are non-random, finding reasons where none exist. This irreverent bestseller has shattered the illusions of people around the world by teaching them how to recognize randomness. Now it can do the same for you. 
 
 Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a radical and paradoxical philosopher for our times. He has spent his life immersing himself in problems of luck, uncertainty, probability, and knowledge, and he has led three high-profile careers around his ideas, as a man of letters, as a businessman-trader, and as a university professor and researcher. 
 
 He is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University's Polytechnic Institute. His books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan have been published in thirty-three languages. Taleb refuses all awards and honours as they debase knowledge by turning it into competitive sports.

The Impact of the Highly Improbable

The Black Swan

The phenomenal international bestseller that shows us how to stop trying to predict everything - and take advantage of uncertainty 
 
What have the invention of the wheel, Pompeii, the Wall Street Crash, Harry Potter and the internet got in common? Why are all forecasters con-artists? Why should you never run for a train or read a newspaper? 
 
This book is all about Black Swans: the random events that underlie our lives, from bestsellers to world disasters. Their impact is huge; they're impossible to predict; yet after they happen we always try to rationalize them. 
 
'Taleb is a bouncy and even exhilarating guide ... I came to relish what he said, and even develop a sneaking affection for him as a person' Will Self, Independent on Sunday 
 
'He leaps like some superhero of the mind' Boyd Tonkin, Independent

A fascinating study of how we are regularly taken for suckers by the unexpected

Like the conversation of a raconteur ... hugely enjoyable - compelling

Confirms his status as a guru for every would-be Damien Hirst, George Soros and aspirant despot

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Skin in the Game

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