The Black Swan

“The Black Swan”:amazon by Nassim Nichoias Taleb. Been on the shelf for a while, finally read it at the urging of one of my smartest friends. A quirky and insightful book. Some of the central thinking about the nature of uncertainty and the human inability to correctly assess risk and act on risk is very important; but as with most nonfiction books, this tome could have been at least 50% shorter, and the author’s style sometimes gets in the way of understanding. I don’t mind the snarky humour but the pedantic nature of some sections gets old – it is as if it is not enough that the reader open his mind to the writer’s ideas, but that the reader must accept them fully and displace all others. Not a tone I find endearing. But still, an important set of concepts to understand.