On the Edge

Masterly… If you — like me — find gambling irresistible, then this section of the book is utterly compelling. It is clear enough to be accessible to the layman but with enough detail and anecdotes to interest those who already know the basics. … [A] highly readable and engaging tour – Sam Freedman * The Times *Engrossing… The River and the Village are among the more memorable and illuminating new social typologies I’ve come across in recent years… A meditation on risk, a study of those most comfortable taking it and an invitation for the rest of us to think about what it means that so much more of our lives now seems to hang on it – David Wallace-Wells * New York Times *A compelling read… Silver covers a lot of ground in this likeable, insightful read, investigating risk-taking ability and how it applies to blue-sky investing. It’s worth the price of the tour – Alan Livsey * Financial Times *Nate Silver is that very rare thing, a celebrity statistician… in a class of his own… As a guide to our dystopian future, in which everyone is busy updating their priors and sizing their bets, On the Edge is indispensable – Ian Sansom * Telegraph *One of the most gripping accounts I have ever read – Paul Seabright * TLS *An enjoyable ride – Idrees Kahloon * New Yorker *Engaging and entertaining… A glimpse of the economy of the future – Tim Wu * New York Times Book Review *Silver had initially intended to write mostly about gambling but ultimately widened his scope as he became convinced that gambling might provide a framework for understanding risk takers in other fields. The result is a book that’s more interesting—Silver managed to land an interview with Bankman-Fried shortly before his arrest in the Bahamas—and more subversive – Max Chafkin * Bloomberg *In On the Edge, Silver compellingly theorizes that humans are in general too risk averse, and that those who can discerningly fight that impulse often benefit greatly in life … A thought-provoking interdisciplinary book which covers a host of timely topics from artificial intelligence, political theory and what happens when risk takers go too far * Associated Press *A clever look into a unique realm. An enlightening study of the people who play the game of risk and win – Kirkus Reviews (starred)

Nate Silver is the founder of FiveThirtyEight and the internationally bestselling author of The Signal and the Noise, which was published in a dozen languages. He writes the Substack ‘Silver Bulletin’.