The Black Swan: Second Edition

Praise for Nassim Nicholas Taleb   “The most prophetic voice of all.”—GQ   Praise for The Black Swan   “[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.”—Financial Times   “Engaging … The Black Swan has appealing cheek and admirable ambition.”—The New York Times Book Review

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has devoted his life to problems of uncertainty, probability, and knowledge. He spent nearly two decades as a businessman and quantitative trader before becoming a full-time philosophical essayist and academic researcher in 2006. Although he spends most of his time in the intense seclusion of his study, or as a flâneur meditating in cafés, he is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute. His main subject matter is “decision making under opacity”—that is, a map and a protocol on how we should live in a world we don’t understand.

Taleb’s books have been published in forty-one languages.