The Bed of Procrustes

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 – James Kidd * Independent on Sunday *[A] quirky, entertaining collection of aphorisms, covering everything from the web to the injuriousness of doing too much work… a wry, often hila­rious glimpse – Robert Collins * The Times *

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.