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  • The Black Swan

  • The Impact of the Highly Improbable
  • Written by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • Narrated by: David Chandler
  • Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (128 ratings)

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The Black Swan cover art

The Black Swan

Written by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Narrated by: David Chandler
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Publisher's Summary

Maverick thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb had an illustrious career on Wall Street before turning his focus to his black swan theory. Not all swans are white, and not all events, no matter what the experts think, are predictable. Taleb shows that black swans, like 9/11, cannot be foreseen and have an immeasurable impact on the world.
©2007 Nassim Nicholas Taleb (P)2007 Recorded Books, LLC
Social Sciences Mathematics
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What the critics say

"[Taleb] administers a severe thrashing to MBA- and Nobel Prize-credentialed experts who make their living from economic forecasting." ( Booklist)
"The hubris of predictions - and our perpetual surprise when the not-predicted happens - are themes of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's engaging new book....It concerns the occurrence of the improbable, the power of rare events and the author's lament that 'in spite of the empirical record we continue to project into the future as if we were good at it.'" ( The New York Times)

What listeners say about The Black Swan

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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Too Long

I love this idea, I hate the standard treatment of stats and forecasting methods, after all there is nothing normal in the Gaussian distribution. The problem is he covers this in about a chapter then spend nine more repeating himself. Further he suggests nothing to compensate. How should you price an option to compare it to its peers? He just ends up suggesting they all are probably too cheap if anything goes wrong and those writing them are taking on WAY to much risk. I’m going to try some of his earlier work, maybe the ideas are better organized in there.

1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Profile Image for Waseem Gharbieh

A Must Read

This book expands your horizons on probability, randomness, and risk. Taleb touches upon topics that I never heard anyone touch upon before.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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Arrogant tone. Painful to listen to

Reading this book would probably be easier to get past the author’s arrogance. Listening to it is just awful.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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  • A
  • 2018-11-01

Swans

I like the concept. Very interesting. will definitely listen again to gather more from this book.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Profile Image for Steve

Insightful but meandering

The author undoubtedly has some good points, but for all his critique of pontificators, he seems to think his own points require a great deal of cloaking in generalities and rhetoric, like butter scraped over too much prose

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Profile Image for Serguei L. Primak

Amazing and fullnof ideas book. Highly recommend

Amazing read not only for those interested in economics but innphylosophy and social sciences and in just real life

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Profile Image for C. L. Aingworth

Mind numbingly boring

I tried. I really tried, but could not finish this highbrow, boring book. Not recommend

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how to win in the markets--and life

The concept and significance of the Black Swan Event--It is a critically important concept for understanding how to make money in stocks, how to understand large events in history, how to know what you don't know. Every high school student should read this book, and its companion volume "Antifragile." Taleb is the first known writer to describe the Black Swan/Antifragile phenomenon, and he does it so clearly through the use of illustrations. David Chandler does an excellent job of conveying the author's literary voice. Highly recommend this book to anyone!

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    4 out of 5 stars
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  • Judd Bagley
  • 2009-05-27

Worth it in the end...I think.

I spent most of my time with this book cursing the author for his ego and inability to get to the point.

Yet, I stuck with it until the end.

That's because the story Taleb tells is fascinating, relevant, and probably worth the mediocre job he does telling it.

And he really does do a mediocre job.

I recommend this book, but also recommend looking for an abridged version first.

122 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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  • Michael
  • 2013-09-18

Black Swan Turkey Jerky

The author has one good point then rants rather incessantly about a wide variety of people and subjects.

So you will not have to read this turkey, here is the meat;
If you suspect the variance of something might be inconsistent, you can’t rely on history plus a Bell-type curve to predict outcomes or risks. That is it. Fourteen hours. It is said many times, many ways, but that is it. Now, this is a very good point. The bell-curve is massively abused, particularly in government and finance. So now, when you see a prospectus or government report prognosticating about risks or costs, ask yourself, is the variance of oil prices, or gold prices, or medical costs, or whatever it is about, really likely to be consistent? If not, disregard the prophecies. Good to remember! Nevertheless there are plenty of places, other than casinos, where using the Bell curve is safe and effective. The author does not say the normal curve should never be used, but one could get that misimpression from the author’s unremitting attacks.

Unfortunately The Black Swan is also laced with assaults on multitudes. The attitude of the author is so pompous and pretentious and tinged with insecurity and even self-loathing that it is literally uncomfortable to listen to. I could go on and on, barely a page went by without something causing me to cringe, shake my head, or groan. I agree with the author’s main point and the narration was good, considering the problematic writing. There were just too many things wrong with this book to allow me to recommend it to anyone.

96 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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  • David Parker
  • 2007-10-13

A Pretentious Bore

I found this book to be thuddingly dull and obtuse. I kept listening (I'm new to Audible) for the great thought to emerge to justify all the stultifying time I had spent listening so far. I gave up after Chapter 6. Had I the book on paper, I would have been able to skim it, see that there was nothing there and save myself the time.

The premise is that there are things that are unpredictable that in retrospect seem inevitable. Think 9/11. That past experince can't account for future events. But after hours of listening to Taleb telling us how much smarter he is than the rest of us -- without giving us a clue how to apply any of his "insights," I became convinced that there is no way to benefit from this book: If you learn how to figure things out and anticipate them, they won't be unpredictable anymore, will they? And since the premise of the book is .... Well, you get it.

How does a book like this one get on so many recommended lists? Must be a Black Swan.

66 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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  • A structural engineer
  • 2007-11-09

Poor style, limited novelty, two great phrases

In some ways Taleb's style is that of an angry overconfident doctoral student: arrogant, full of cutesy headings and overly broad contemputuous attacks on perceived fools, but often thin on defense of his thesis. It can be hard to see beyond the stylistic limitations to his argument's merits.

Scholars familiar with the concept of epistemic uncertainty (the possible discrepancy between nature and our concept of it) may perceive that the black swan broadly overlaps the idea. Taleb's contribution, and what I like about the phrase "black swan" as opposed to epistemic uncertainty, may be his argument that in many domains of life the black swan swamps the mathematically familiar uncertainties which we sometimes call aleatoric.

One chapter may make the frequently painful slog worthwhile: in the middle of the book Taleb introduces the ludic fallacy, by which he means the false idea that uncertainties in life are like uncertainties in casino games. In a casino, the rules are well established and the uncertainties readily quantified. Taleb convincingly argues that in many aspects of real life (even as he engagingly shows in the real financial life of a casino) the uncertainties that drive history are not the ones of which we are aware and plan for.

It is for the phrase "black swan" and the idea of the ludic fallacy that I am glad to have read the book. Had Taleb had a better editor, or perhaps that he had listened to the editor he did have, I would have given the book another star.

57 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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  • Paul Mullen
  • 2008-03-22

A fun Diatribe Against Silly Thinking

OK, you'll get the basic point of this book about 1/3 of the way through: The impact of the highly improbable is like to be much greater than the cumulative impact of the probable and predictable.

But Taleb makes this so much fun to read/listen to that you'll find yourself drawn into example after example of the silly presumptions that lead us to live as though we can predict the world around us.

The author is a little full of himself, but that's part of what makes it fun.

You don't have to be a math/statistics techie to get the concepts in this book. It will reduce your dependence on precise prediction and give you a chance to live free of the tyranny of precision.

Enjoy!

52 people found this helpful

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  • Joshua Kim
  • 2012-06-10

Forever Changed My Thinking

I think that Taleb is probably an S.O.B. and a nut....but his argument that the world (and our lives) is in reality ruled by unpredictable large-scale events (black swans) is intriguing and forcefully argued. Taleb's background is in quantitative trading...and while arrogant beyond belief his arguments seem hard to dismiss.

50 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Horace
  • 2009-03-16

Brilliant, Obnoxious, Narcissistic, Brilliant

The book assumes that you sort of know that the normal distribution is grossly overused in all kinds of science and pseudo-science. It explains in very easy to understand terms why this leads to a host of misunderstandings about the way the world really works. Examples include the recent sub-prime problems.

At some level this is something that serious students of mathematics have understood for a long time, but few are able to explain it this well and this systematically.

The style of the book will strike many who prefer more traditional prose as juvenile and narcissistic. But the brilliance of the book tends to overcome these annoyances.

48 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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  • Oldtimer
  • 2007-12-13

Enlightening & Engaging

I decided to write a review after listening to the book twice and enjoying it greatly both times. I didn’t think readers were getting a fair representation of this book’s contents by just reading the previous reviews.

Perhaps this book doesn’t strike a cord with everybody. The concepts are presented intertwined with personal stories and often come across as strongly stated opinions. One will certainly appreciate the book much more if one has had his or her own fair share of struggles with the concepts of knowledge, our perception of truth, our biases in framing the truth, and ultimately the false sense of confidence that we often have as to why things are the way they are.

Unless you thought about, for example, why financial markets are ridden with extremes, or why beginners seem to be lucky, why intelligence does not seem to matter much, why some risk taking pays off, and you didn’t like the typical answers given to these questions, you probably won’t enjoy the book a whole lot.

No book can truthfully tell you how to make money. This one is no exception. The greatest benefit of this book, if it stays with you, is to make you conscious of how little you know about the reality, and how little statistics can be trusted. Hopefully, this in turn, will make you a better decision maker especially when stakes are high.

Taleb’s genius is to provide a single framework for understanding of many of our observations in mostly unrelated disciplines. He (or his narrator) may sound angry or condescending at times. Perhaps he shouldn’t, but most people would, if they subscribed to his school of thoughts and examined events around them as skeptical empiricists.

44 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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  • Peter
  • 2009-01-22

OK, I get it!

A good book but the author could have shared the message in about half the time. Gets a little wordy and I found myself saying "I get it, move on" during the second half of the book.

39 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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  • Brian
  • 2008-07-16

Two sentences stretched into 15 hours

The idea is interesting for 2 pages. Then the author runs out of things to say.
The rest of the book is about how smart he is and how dumb everyone he knows is. Wow. It must suck to have only stupid friends.
I should have stopped listening, but I can't seem to for fear I'll miss something - and one of my professors recommended this book. Funny thing is, the same closed-minded smugness I hate about my professor is exactly what I hate about this author.

28 people found this helpful

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  • Alexei Tcherkassov
  • 2018-11-17

eye opening study of our decisions for the future

contains a lot of interesting idea about our capacities to forecast the future. divides the world in two Camps, one foreseeable ("mediocristan") and one completely unforeseeable ("extremistan") and shows how our world is mostly unforeseeable.
don't read it if you want to keep faith into forecasters!
for some people the book might seem negative as the author heavily attacks many established rules and tradition, but for me it was a door opening reading which gives a different view on my daily actions.
my favorite recommendation from this book: "don't run after the train."