61 Books Nassim Taleb Recommends You Read in His Own Words PDF

8-5-2020 61 Books Nassim Taleb Recommends you Read in his Own Words
61 Books Nassim Taleb Recommends you Read in

his Own Words
Farnam Street (Shane Parrish)
Mar 13, 2017 · 39 min read
Nassim Taleb, the polarizing author of best-selling books The Black Swan and
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, offers 61 reading recommendations in his
own words.
. . .
1. Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos
Solid Book on Interventionism, Should be Mandatory Reading in Foreign Affairs.

This is an outstanding book on the side effects of interventionism, written in extremely
elegant prose and with maximal clarity. It documents how people find arguments
couched in moralistic terms to intervene in complex systems they don’t understand.
These interventions trigger endless chains of unintended consequences –consequences
for the victims, but none for the interventionistas, allowing them to repeat the mistake
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again and again. Puri, as an insider, outlines the principles and legal mechanisms, then
runs through the events of the past few years since the Iraq invasion; each one of his
chapters are models of concision, presenting the story of Ukraine, Syria, Lybia, and
Yemen, among others, as standalone briefings to the uninitiated. It was high time that
somebody in international affairs has approached the problem of “iatrogenics”, i.e.
harm done by the healer. This book should be mandatory reading to every student and
practitioner of foreign affairs.
2. Idea Makers: Personal Perspectives on the Lives & Ideas of Some Notable
People (5 Stars)
The real thing. A jewel. The general public is usually supplied by books on
mathematical scientists written by “science communicators” and other outside
observers–the worst by far being the academic historians of science. Their books are
like reviews of comparative squid ink recipes written by anorexics, or descriptions of
the Loire Valley by visually impaired travel writers. They are well written, which masks
the BS. The descriptions focus on “interesting” traits of the personalities; scientists are
discussed as if they were partaking of spectator sports. This fellow “was the best…”,
this fellow “was the first to…”, “Einstein made a big blunder”, etc. This book, “Idea
Makers”, is written from an insider. It is the real thing on several accounts. Primo,
Wolfram deserves to be in the book as an “idea maker”, in his own right. Secondo,
Wolfram is the developer of a new way to do (useful) mathematics, an entirely new
method, which allows us to tinker with mathematics, something that is an anathema
to purists. Thus he depicts Ramanujan, not with the usual mathematical prism of the
theorem crowds, but as someone who, starting with intuitions, does experiments till a
mathematical identity feels right. As an eyewitness, I spent almost all my career in
quant finance and probability toying with Mathematica (Stephen Wolfram’s
invention), and saw it accumulate special functions and tools. Mathematica allowed
me to be a car mechanic who looked under the hood; such experience makes us look at
the pompous theoretician as a cook would a nerdy chemist. The book is about this
refreshing perspective: theorems were to Ramanujan a thing used by European
mathematicians to convince other European mathematicians. Terso, Wolfram is fair.
He shows a fair –even adulatory– portrait of Mandelbrot, in spite of attacks by the
latter. Indeed, if Mandelbrot hated someone, the person has to be good and
threatening. Otherwise he would not bother mentioning him. Finally, many of the
people involved are actually known either personally (Feynman, Mandelbrot, Minsky),
or like Boole, Ramanujan, Godel, and Lebnitz, “connect” to the author.
3. The Secret of Fatima (5 Stars)
Masterly! This is the page turner par excellence; every new page brings some surprise
and it was impossible for me to put the book down. I even read some of it during
elevator rides, not being able to resist. And truly sophisticated: Nobody but Peter
Tanous would have imagined to cross James Bond with a Catholic priest.”
4. Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure (5 stars)
A gem: how to go from the abstract to the abstract in a playful way. There is no
book like it.
This book takes us through the formulation of the theorems in “On Landau damping”
by Clément Mouhot and Cédric Villani. Villani is playful in real life, his research is
playful, and the book is playful.
This is a gem for a singular reason. One sees exactly how Villani (or a pure
mathematician) goes from abstract to abstract without ever exiting the world of pure
and symbolic mathematics, even though the subject concerns a very concrete real-
world topic. I kept waiting for him to use simulations or even plots to see how the
equations worked. But he did not … he and Mouhot had recourse to outside help (a
student or an assistant) for the graphs and he camly noted that they “looked” great.
Later in the book he relied on others to do the numerical work… as an afterthought.
Most physicists, quants, and applied mathematicians would have played with a
computer to get the intuition; Villani just worked with mathematical objects, abstract
mathematical objects, and very abstract at that. And this is a big deal for the subject
because it belongs to a certain class of problems that do not have analytic solutions,
usually requiring numerical approaches.
Landau damping is about something many people are indirectly familiar with. Some
history: Fokker–Planck equation, itself the Kolmogorov forward equation, is used
commonly as the law of motion of particles (hence diffusions in finance). We quants
use it in the main partial stochastic differential equation. In plasma physics it is related
to the Boltzman equation, which, by using mean-interraction in place of every
interration (mean-field), leads to the Vlasov equation. Landau damping is (sort of)
about how things don’t blow up because of some exponential decay. Proving it outside
the linear version remained elusive. Villani and Mouhot set to prove it. They eventually
do. One note. I read it in the English translation (because I was in a hurry to get the
book), but noticed an oddity that may confuse the reader. “Calcul” in French does not
mean “calculation” (in the sense of numerical calculation) but “derivation”, so the
reader might be confused about calculations thinking they were numerical when
Villani stayed at the abstract/symbolic level.
I would have read the book in one sitting. It grips you like a detective novel.
PS- Some UK BS operator, the type of journalist with an attempt at some PhD in
something related to physics who thinks he knows it all and is the representative of the
general public trashed the book in the Spectator. Ignore him: the fellow is clueless.
Look at reviews by PRACTICING quants and mathematicians. I do not think there is
another book like this one.
5. Modern Aramaic-English/English-Modern Aramaic Dictionary & Phrasebook:

Assyrian/Syriac (5 Stars)
There is no way we Levantines can learn the language of our ancestors in an organic
way except via nerds insisting on 1) grammar, 2) writing in one of the unwieldy Syriac
scripts that one cannot even read on a computer screen without dowloading strange
fonts. But Aramaic is still spoken, let us take advantage of it, and figure out how to say
“I want to eat mjaddara” rather than memorize poetry by some dead author. Aramaic
isn’t a dead language and it is the shame Levantines study Arabic instead of our own
heritage.
This book in the Latin alphabet makes both Swadaya and Turoyo alive and easy to
read, with all manner of real-world expressions. One can use it to supplement
scholarly studies, or just to figure out how modern people speak our ancient language.
There are Arabic influences, but the distance between the spoken language and, say,
Bar Hebraeus is quite narrow.
I would suggest the authors expand the dictionary. It would be the only one in the latin
script.
Most excellent, except for very few and small mistakes. “Debo” in Turoyo is not wolf,
but bear.
6. The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the
Poor (5 Stars)
The point that top-down development methods are great on paper but have not
produced benefits (“so far”) is a point Easterly has made before, heavily influencing
yours truly in the formation his own argument against naive interventionism and the
collection of “humanitarians” fulfilling their personal growth and shielding themselves
from their conscience… This is more powerful: the West has been putting
development ahead of moral issues, patronizingly setting aside the right of the people
to decide their own fate, including whether they want these “improvements”, hence
compounding failure and turning much of development into an agenda that benefits
the careers (and angst) of “humanitarians”, imperial policies, and, not least, local
autocrats *without* any moral contribution. Talking about a sucker problem.
***
To put it in an aphorism, they didn’t ask the people if they would rather get respect and
no aid rather than aid and no respect.
7. Modelling Extremal Events: for Insurance and Finance (Stochastic Modelling and
Applied Probability) (5 stars “Indispensable”)
The mathematics of extreme events, or the remote parts of the probability

distributions, is a discipline on its own, more important than any other with respect to
risk and decisions since some domains are dominated by the extremes: for the class of
subexponential (and of course for the subclass of power laws) the tails ARE the story.
Now this book is the bible for the field. It has been diligently updated. It is complete, in
the sense that there is nothing of relevance that is not mentioned, treated, or referred
to in the text. My business is hidden risk which starts where this book stops, and I need
the most complete text for that.
In spite of the momentous importance of the field, there is a very small number of
mathematicians who deal with tail events; of these there is a smaller group who go
both inside and outside the “Cramer conditions” (intuitively, thin-tailed or exponential
decline).
It is also a book that grows on you. I would have given it a 5 stars when I started using
it; today I give it 6 stars, and certainly 7 next year.
I am buying a second copy for the office. If I had to go on a desert island with 2
probability books, I would take Feller’s two volumes (written >40 years ago) and this
one.
One housecleaning detail: buy the hardcover, not the paperback as the ink quality is
weaker for the latter.
8. The Kelly Capital Growth Investment Criterion: Theory and Practice (5 Stars)
There are two methods to consider in a risky strategy.
1) The first is to know all parameters about the future and engage in optimized
portfolio construction, a lunacy unless one has a god-like knowledge of the future. Let
us call it Markowitz-style. In order to implement a full Markowitz- style optimization,
one needs to know the entire joint probability distribution of all assets for the entire
future, plus the exact utility function for wealth at all future times. And without errors!
(I have shown that estimation errors make the system explode.)
2) Kelly’s method (or, rather, Kelly-Thorpe), developed around the same period, which
requires no joint distribution or utility function. It is very robust. In practice one needs
to estimate the ratio of expected profit to worst- case return– dynamically adjusted to
avoid ruin. In the case of barbell transformations, the worst case is guaranteed (leave
80% or so of your money in reserves). And model error is much, much milder under
Kelly criterion. So, assuming one has the edge (as a sole central piece of information),
engage in a dynamic strategy of variable betting, getting more conservative after losses
(“cut your losses”) and more aggressive “with the house’s money”. The entire focus is
the avoidance of gambler’s ruin.
The first strategy was only embraced by academic financial economists –empty suits
without skin in the game — because you can make an academic career writing BS
papers with method 1 much better than with method 2. On the other hand EVERY
SURVIVING speculator uses explicitly or implicitly method 2 (evidence: Ray Dalio,
Paul Tudor Jones, Renaissance, even Goldman Sachs!) For the first method, think of
LTCM and the banking failure.
Let me repeat. Method 2 is much, much, much more scientific in the true sense of the
word, that is rigorous and applicable. Method 1 is good for “job market papers” . Now
this book presents all the major papers for the second line of thinking. It is almost
exhaustive; many great thinkers in Information theory and probability (Ed Thorpe,
Leo Breiman, T M Cover, Bill Ziemba) are represented… even the original paper by
Bernouilli.
Buy 2 copies, just in case you lose one. This book has more meat than any other book
in decision theory, economics, finance, etc…
9. A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes (5 Stars)
We Sherlock Holmes fans, readers, and secret imitators need a map. Here it is. Peter
Bevelin is one of the wisest people on the planet. He went through the books and
pulled out sections from Conan Doyle’s stories that are relevant to us moderns, a guide
to both wisdom and Sherlock Holmes. It makes you both wiser and eager to reread
Sherlock Holmes.
(Ed. I posted on Peter’s Book and while he rarely grants interview requests, I was able
to snag him for this insightful interview.)
10. The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability before Pascal (5 Stars)
Indispensable. As a practitioner of probability, I’ve read many book on the subject.

More are linear combinations of other books and ideas rehashed without real
understanding that the idea of probability harks back the Greek pisteuo (credibility)
and pervaded classical thought. Almost all of these writers made the mistake to think
that the ancients were not into probability. And most books such “Against the Gods”
are not even wrong about the notion of probability: odds on coin flips are a mere
footnote. If the ancients were not into computable probabilities, it was not because of
theology, but because they were not into games. They dealt with complex decisions,
not merely probability. And they were very sophisticated at it.
This book stands above, way above the rest: I’ve never seen a deeper exposition of the
subject, as this text covers, in addition to the mathematical bases, the true
philosophical origin of the notion of probability. In addition Franklin covers matters
related to ethics and contract law, such as the works of the medieval thinker Pierre de
Jean Olivi, that very few people discuss today.
11. Probability, Random Variables and Stochastic Processes (5 Stars)
When readers and students ask to me for a useable book for nonmathematicians to get
into probability (or a probabilistic approach to statistics), before embarking into
deeper problems, I suggest this book by the Late A. Papoulis. I even recommend it to
mathematicians as their training often tends to make them spend too much time on
limit theorems and very little on the actual “plumbing”.
The treatment has no measure theory, cuts to the chase, and can be used as a desk
reference. If you want measure theory, go spend some time reading Billingsley. A deep
understanding of measure theory is not necessary for scientific and engineering
applications; it is not necessary for those who do not want to work on theorems and
technical proofs.
I’ve notice a few complaints in the comments section by people who felt frustrated by
the treatment: do not pay attention to them. Ignore them. It the subject itself that is
difficult, not this book. The book, in fact, is admirable and comprehensive given the
current state of the art.
I am using this book as a benchmark while writing my own, but more advanced,
textbook (on errors in use of statistical models). Anything derived and presented in
Papoulis, I can skip. And when students ask me what they need as pre-requisite to
attend my class or read my book, my answer is: Papoulis if you are a scientist,
Varadhan if you are more abstract.
12. Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning (5 Stars)
There is something admirable about the school of the Russians: they are thinkers
doing math, with remarkable clarity, minimal formalism, and total absence of
unnecessary pedantry one finds in more modern texts (in the post Bourbaki era). This
is of course surprising as one would have expected the exact opposite from the
products of the communist era. Mathematicians should be using this book as a model
for their own composition. You can read it and reread it. Professors should assign this
in addition to modern texts, as readers can get intuitions, something alas absent from
modern texts.
13. Probability Theory (Courant Lecture Notes) (5 Stars)
I know which books I value when I end up buying a second copy after losing the first
one. This book gives a complete overview of the basis of probability theory with some
grounding in measure theory, and presents the main proofs. It is remarkable because
of its concision and completeness: visibly prof Varadhan lectured from these notes and
kept improving on them until we got this gem. There is not a single sentence too many,
yet nothing is missing.
For those who don’t know who he is, Varadhan stands as one of the greatest
probabilists of all time. Learning probability from him is like learning from Aristotle.
Varadhan has two other similar volumes one covering stochastic processes the other
into the theory of large deviations (though older than this current text). The book on
Stochastic Processes should be paired with this one.
14. Models.Behaving.Badly.: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to

Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life (5 Stars)
Here is what I wrote in my endorsement: Emanuel Derman has written my kind of a

book, an elegant combination of memoir, confession, and essay on ethics, philosophy
of science and professional practice. He convincingly establishes the difference
between model and theory and shows why attempts to model financial markets can
never be genuinely scientific. It vindicates those of us who hold that financial
modeling is neither practical nor scientific. Exceedingly readable.
From the remarks here, people seem to be blaming Derman for not having written the
type of books they usually read… They are blaming him for being original! This is very
philistinic. This book is a personal essay; if you don’t like it, don’t read it, there is no
need to blame the author for not delivering your regular science reporting. Why don’t
you go blame Montaigne for discussing his personal habits in the middle of a
meditation on war inspired by Plutarch?
15. Body by Science: A Research Based Program to Get the Results You Want in 12
Minutes a Week (5 Stars)
I feel guilty for not having posted a review earlier: I owe a lot to this book. I figured out
the value of intensity training and maximizing recovery. I use the ideas but with minor
modifications (my own personal workout is entirely based on free weights and
barbells, but I incur –and accept –a risk of injury). I have been applying the ideas for
more than three years. Just get over the inhibitions (and illusions of control) and
accept the idea of training less.
Gratitude.
16. The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of
Boom and Bust (5 Stars)
I read this book after completing my exposition of overcompensation, how a stressor or

a random event causes an increase in strength, in excess of what is needed, like a
redundancy. I was also looking for evidence of convex reaction to stressor, or the effect
of a mathematical property called Jensen’s inequality in domains and found it exposed
here (in other words, why a combination low dose (most of the time) and high dose
(rarely) beats medium dose all the time. The authors presents the evidence for the
phenomenon in the following: 1) acute stressors cum recovery beat both absence of
stressors and chronic ones; 2) stressors make one stronger (post traumatic growth); 3)
risk management is mediated by the deep structures in us, not rational decision-
making; 4) winning causes an increase in strength (the latter are more complicated
effects of convexity/Jensen’s Inequality).
Great book. I ignored the connection to financial markets while reading it. But I
learned that when under stress, one should seek the familiar. Bravo!
17. The Opposing Shore (5 Stars)
Until I read this book, Buzzati’s “Il deserto dei tartari” was my favorite novel, perhaps
my only novel, the only one I cared to keep re-reading through life. This is, remarkably
a very similar story about the antichamber of anticipation (rather than “the
antichamber of hope” as I called Buzzati’s book), but written in a much finer language,
by a real writer (Buzzati was a journalist, which made his prose more functional) ; the
style is lapidary with remarkable precision; it has texture, wealth of details, and
creates a mesmerizing athmosphere. Once you enter it, you are stuck there. I kept
telling myself while reading it: “this is the book”. It suddenly replaced the “deserto”.
A few caveats/comments. First, I read it in the original French Le Rivage des Syrtes
(French Edition), not in this English translation, but I doubt that the translator can
mess up such a fine style and the imagery. Second, the blurb says Gracq received the
Goncourt prize for it. Julien Gracq REFUSED the Goncourt, he despised the Parisian
literary circles and by 1951 decided to stay in the margin. He stuck to his publisher
José Corti rather than switch to the fancy Gallimard after his success (as Proust did)
(or other publishing houses for the fakes and the selfpromoters). Third, this book
came out a few years after Buzzati’s “deserto”, but before Buzzati was translated into
French. I wonder if Gracq had heard of the “deserto”; the coincidence is too strong to
be ignored.
18. Bull by the Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street from Wall Street and Wall
Street from Itself (5 Stars)
I don’t have time for a full review for now; all I have to say is that we have the account
of a person who says it the way it was, revealing the types of truths that don’t fit the
New York Times and others pawns. When history is written, this will be used, not the
spin by the bankers’ slaves and soldiers (Geithner, Rubin et al.) Bravo Sheila!
19. Information: The New Language of Science (5 stars)
If you want an introduction to information theory, and, in a way, probability theory

from the real front door, this is it. A clearly written book, very intuitive, explains
things, such as the Monty Hall problem in a few lines. I will make it a prerequisite
before more technical great books, such as Cover and Thompson.
20. Free The Animal: Lose Weight & Fat With The Paleo Diet (5 stars)
A charming primer on the paleo idea, with an illustration through the authors own
life. I read it in one sitting.
21. Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind (5 stars)
This is a great synthesis of the modularity approach to cognitive science. It covers the
entire field and has the right footnotes for the patches.
The style is readable, & the author has an attitude (with is a very good thing, but his
jokes are often bland, not aggressive enough). While I strongly disagree with his
treatment of morality (I am deontic), I can safely say, so far, that this is not just one of
the best books in cognitive science, but certainly one of the most readable.
22. Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (5
stars)
I read this book twice. The first time, I thought that it was excellent, the best
compendium of ideas of social science by arguably the best thinker in the field. I took
copious notes, etc. I agreed with its patchwork-style approach to rational decision
making. I knew that it had huge insights applicable to my refusal of general theories
[they don’t work], rather limit ourselves to nuts and bolts [they work].
Then I started reading it again, as the book tends to locate itself by my bedside and
sneaks itself in my suitcase when I go on a trip. It is as if the book wanted me to read it.
It is what literature does to you when it is at its best. So I realized why: it had another
layer of depth –and the author distilled ideas from the works of Proust, La
Rochefoucault, Tocqueville, Montaigne, people with the kind of insights that extend
beyond the ideas, and that makes you feel that a reductionist academic treatment of
the subject will necessary distort it [& somehow Elster managed to combine
Montaigne and Kahneman-Tversky]. So as an anti-Platonist I finally found a rigorous
treatment of human nature that is not Platonistic –not academic (in the bad sense of
the word).
23. The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography from the Revolution to the
First World War (5 stars)
This book has wonderful qualities that I am certain will be picked up by other
reviewers. But I would like to add the following. This is the most profound
examination of how nationality is enforced on a group of people, with the internal
colonization process and the stamping out of idiosyncratic traits. As someone
suspicious of government and state control, I was wondering how France did so well in
spite of having a big government. This book gave me the answer: it took a long time for
the government and the “nation” to penetrate the depth of deep France, “la France
profonde”. It was not until recently that French was spoken by the majority of the
citizens. Schools taught French but it was just like Greek or Latin: people forgot it right
after they finished their (short) school life. For a long time France’s villages were
unreachable.
A great book, a great investigation.
24. Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet,
Weight Control, and Disease (5 stars)
Gary Taubes is a true empiricist. I can’t believe people hold on to the Platonicity of the
thermodynamic theory of diet (calorie in = calorie out).
Read it twice, once for the diet, once a a rich document in the history of science.
25. Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through
Jokes (4 stars)
I read Plato and the Platypus by Umberto Eco, which I found brilliant and was sucked
into buying this book thinking it was about the same problem of categories. But
Philosophy this is not, or if it is, it is not deep enough to give satisfaction. This is like a
brief drink in an airplane lounge with someone funny, smart, witty, but not too funny.
So I would give it my lowest rating: 4 stars (as an author I can’t give below that –I just
would not review).
Would I buy it again? Perhaps, but only for a plane ride. It left me very very hungry for
both jokes and philosophy.
26. Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger, 3rd Edition (5 Stars)
A wonderful book on wisdom and decision-making written by a wise decision-maker.

This is the kind of book you read first, then leave by your bedside and re-read a bit
every day, so you can slowly soak up the wisdom. It is sort of Montaigne but applied to
business, with a great investigation of the psychological dimension of decision-
making.
I like the book for many reasons –the main one is that it was written by a practitioner
who knows what he wants, not by an academic.
Enjoy it.
27. The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (5 stars)
I initially bought this book as I was curious about the differences between Eastern &
Western traditions, particularly with the notion of theosis –the deification of man. This
book goes far deeper, and covers pre-Christian practices (like Stoic thoughts, the
deifications of Kings, Roman Emperors, that of private citizens who committed
symbolic acts –such as Antinous, Hadrian’s obsession, who drowned to “save” mankind
and other sotirologies).
The book was initially Russell’s doctoral thesis, which, as far as I can guess from the
dates, had to have been completed when he was in late middle age. But he made it
very readable, free of the theophilosophical jargon of similar texts. He still has quotes
in the original language and it is a true piece of scholarship.
28. Statistical Models: Theory and Practice (5 stars)
I spent my life focusing on the errors of statistics and how they sometimes fail us in
real life, because of the misinterpretation of what the techniques can do for you. This
book is outstanding in the following two aspects: 1) It is of immense clarity,
embedding everything in real situations, 2) It uses the real-life situation to critique the
statistical model and show you the limit of statistic. For instance, he shows a few
anecdotes here and there to illustrate how correlation between two variables might
not mean anything causal, or how asymptotic properties may not be relevant in real
life.
This is the first statistics book I’ve seen that cares about presenting statistics as a tool to
GET TO THE TRUTH.
Please buy it.
29. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs (5 stars)
The Birth Stochastic Science: Rewriting the History of Medicine
Controlled experiment can easily show absence of design in medical research: you
compare the results of top-down directed research to randomly generated discoveries.
Well, the U.S. government provides us with the perfect experiment for that: the
National Cancer Institute that came out of the Nixon “war on cancer” in the early
1970s.
“Despite the Herculean effort and enormous expense, only a few drugs for the
treatment of cancer were found through NCI’s centrally directed, targeted program.
Over a twenty-year period of screening more than 144,000 plant extracts, representing
about 15,000 species, not a single plant-based anticancer drug reached approved
status. This failure stands in stark contrast to the discovery in the late 1950s of a major
group of plant-derived cancer drugs, the Vinca Alcaloids -a discovery that came about
by chance, not through directed research.”
From Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs, by Morton

Meyers, a book that just came out. It is a MUST read. Please go buy it. Read it twice,
not once. Although the author does not take my drastic “stochastic tinkering”
approach, he provides all kind of empirical evidence for the role of design. He does not
directly discuss the narrative fallacy(q.v.) and the retrospective distortion (q.v.) but he
certainly allows us to rewrite the history of medicine.
We did not realize that cures for cancer had been coming from other brands of
research. You search for noncancer drugs and find something you were not looking for
(and vice versa). But the interesting constant:
a- The discoverer is almost always treated like an idiot by his colleagues. Meyers
describes the vicious side effect of “peer reviewing”.
b- Often people see the result but cannot connect the dots (researchers are autistic in
their own way).
c- The members of the guild gives the researcher a hard time for not coming from their
union. Pasteur was a chemist not a doctor/biologist. The establishment kept asking
him “where is your M.D., monsieur”. Luckily Pasteur had too much confidence to be
deterred.
d- Many of the results are initially discovered by an academic researchers who neglects
the consequences because it is not his job –he has a script to follow. Or he cannot
connect the dots because he is a nerd. Meyers uses Darwin as the ultimate model: the
independent gentleman scholar who does not need anyone and can follow a lead when
he sees it.
e- It seems to me that discoverers are nonnerds.
Now it is depressing to see the works of the late Roy Porter, a man with remarkable
curiosity and a refined intellect, who wrote many charming books on the history of
medicine. Does the narrative fallacy cancels everything he did? I hope not. We
urgently need to rewrite the history of medicine without the ex post explanations.
Meyers started the process: he provides data for modern medicine since, say, Pasteur. I
am more interested in the genesis of the field before the Galenic nerdification.
30. Financial Derivatives: Pricing, Applications, and Mathematics (5 stars)
One of the author, Baz, gave me a copy of this book when it came out and it went to
sleep in my library as I was not in a finance mood. I forgot about it until this week as I
was stuck on a problem related to risk-neutral pricing and the Girsanov theorem
concerning changes in probability measure. I looked at every passage on the the
subject until I hit on it. Then I realized that I should have read it before: it is a
condensed, but extremely deep , and complete exposition of the subject of theoretical
finance.
No financial book has the clarity of this text.
Other quant books do not have such notions as “pricing kernel” and economic
theoretical matters. I would recommend it as a necessary piece of the “quant” toolkit.
Every quant should have it as a background tool as the usual quant literature is
standalone and devoid of these concepts.
31. Thinking and Deciding (5 stars)
People vote with their wallet –particularly when they do it a second time, when they
REpurchase. Those who believe in the “revelation of preferences” should note that
there are books one buys again when a copy is lost –particularly when they are read
cover to cover.
I am buying another copy of this book as mine was lost or misplaced. That should
speak volumes.
32. Critical Phenomena in Natural Sciences: Chaos, Fractals, Selforganization and

Disorder: Concepts and Tools (Springer Series in Synergetics) (5 stars)
As I am teaching the statistical mechanics part of a graduate class in mathematics,I

was looking for a textbook on complex systems & statistical physics with derivations,
intuitions, and some physical examples. I did not realize that I was looking too far –
Sornette, with hom I correspond regularly, is well known for his contributions and his
prolific output (actually some physicists make fun of the quantity of papers he writes).
So his book did not come to mind. I once stumbled on a problem with the derivation of
preferential attachments;he recommended his book, which I took with a grain a salt.
After spending some time working the derivations on scalable laws, extreme value
theory, renormalization groups in this book, I elected to use it as my textbook. There is
no equivalent. I have a dozen such yellow manuals; this one is complete and ultimately
clearest.
I do not know of a better textbook.
33. The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows
Older (5 stars)
If you like the thinker’s prose, the so-called “romantic science”,a style attributed to the
Russian neuroscientist A. R. Luria,which consists in publishing original research in
literary form, you would love this book. Clearly intellectual scientists are vanishing
under the weight of the commoditization of the discipline. But once in a while
someone emerges to reverse such setbacks.
Goldberg, who was the great Luria’s student and collaborator, is even more colorful
and fun to read than the master. He is egocentric, abrasive, opinionated, and colorful.
He is also disdainful of the conventional beliefs in neurosciences –for instance he is
suspicious of the assignment of specific functions, such as language, to anatomical

regions. He is also skeptical of the journalistic “triune” brain. His theory is that the
hemispheric specialization is principally along pattern matching and information
processing lines:the left side stores patterns, while the right one processes novel tasks.
It is convincing to see that children suffer more from a right brain injury, while adults
have the opposite effect.
There is a little bit of open plugging of Goldberg’s for-profit institute;he would have
gotten better results by being subtle. A fre minor points. I did not understand why
Goldberg discusses “modularity”, of which he is critical, as if it were the same thing in
both neurobiology and in cognitive science. In neurobiology, modularity implies
regional localization, while cognitive scientists (Marr, Fodor, etc.) make no such
assumption: for them it is entirely functional and they would be in great agreement
with Goldberg. Also I did not understand why he attributes the language instinct to
Pinker, not Chomsky, and why he makes snide remarks about behavioral scientists like
Kahneman and Tversky. But these are very minor details that do not weaken the
message (I still gave the book 5 stars). I am now spoiled; I need more essays by
opinionated, original,and intellectual, contemporary scientists.
34. The Sunday Philosophy Club : An Isabel Dalhousie Mystery (5 stars)
If your interests are limited to mystery books, nothing else, this book is not for you.
I initially bought this book because of the title, thinking that we would have a female
version of Her Professor Dr Dr (Hon.) Moritz-Maria von Igenfeld, the Pninish
uberscholar philologist who wrote the seminal Portugese Irregular Verbs (“after which
there was nothing left to discuss about the subject, Nothing.”). I was curious to see
how he would present a female version of such scholar.
He did not. Nor was it a detective story, although there is an element of suspense. This
book is about Applied Ethics, a subject about which the author seems to know a bit. It
also makes you feel like leading a quite thinking life in Edinburgh.
I don’t want to spoil the story but I felt that I was reading a detective story until I
realized what it was…
35. How Nature Works: The Science of Self-organized Criticality (5 stars)
This book is a great attempt at finding some universality based on systems in a

“critical” state, with departures from such state taking place in a manner that follows
power laws. The sandpile is a great baby model for that.
Some people are critical of Bak’s approach, some even suggesting that we may not get
power laws in these “sandpile” effects, but something less scalable in the tails. The
point is :so what? The man has vision.
I looked at the reviews of this book. Clearly a few narrow-minded scientists do not
seem to like it (many did not like Per Bak’s ego). But the book is remarkably intuitive
and the presentation is so clear that he takes you by the hand. It is even entertaining. If
you are looking to find flaws in his argument his pedagogy allows it (it is immediately
obvious to us who dabble with simulations of these processes that you need an infinite
sandpile to get a pure power law).
Another problem. I have been ordering the book on Amazon for ages. Copernicus
books does not respond to emails. I got my copy at the NYU library. Bak passed away 2
years ago and nobody seems to be pushing for his interest and that of us his readers
(for used books to sell for 99 implies some demand). This convinces me NEVER to
publish with Springer.
36. Social Cognition: Making Sense of People (5 stars)
I spent some time looking for a simple bedside aggregation of the various topics
associated with the psychology of decision making and the various perceptual biases,
without finding much. Most of the books are excellent; but, aside from this one (and
Jon Baron’s) they are usually compilation of original research. I like to have a readable
consolidation of the material not far from my figertips. I was lucky to have found this
book, which provides a wonderful and comprehensive coverage of the topics.
It is limpid, precise, illustrative, showing a wonderful clarity of mind.
Now the bad news. The author passed away recently at the age of 48.
37. The (Mis)behavior of Markets (5 stars)
I have been involved in the professional practice of uncertainty for almost all of my
adult life. I’ve seen and read books and papers on the subject of deviations, with “this
is interesting” here and there. I closed this book feeling that it was the first book in
economics that spoke directly to me. Not only that, but this astonishing simplicity,
realism, and relevance of the subject makes it the only work in finance I’ve read that
seemed to make sense.
I cannot make justice to the book other than say 1) MAKES SENSE, 2) EASY TO
UNDERSTAND, 3) PRESENT SUCH EMPIRICAL VALIDY that it will make financial
economists (charlatans) have to hide deeper from the common man with their
complicated “mathematics”.
Mandelbrot brought fractals into mathematics by going to the general public. He is

doing the same here: pleading to the regular man unburnded with knowledge of
economics.
38. The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity
(5 stars)
You are a hot shot in a company, though not the boss. You are paid extremely well, but,
again you have plenty of bosses above you (say the partners of an investment firm). Is
it better than deriving a modest income being your own boss? The counterintuive
answer is NO. You will live longer in the second situation, even controlling for diet,
lifestyle, and genetic predispositions.
Marmot spent years poring over data; he left no stone unturned and is well read in the
general literature on human nature. This idea of people living longer when they exert
control over their lives has not spread yet. That people lead longer lives when they
trust their neighbors and feel part of a community is far reaching. Just think of the
implications on social justice etc. Also think that everything you learn on human
preferences and well-being in both economics and medicine is either incomplete
(medicine) or bogus (economics).
The book is well written, humorous at times, and rigorous –it reads like a well-
translated scientific paper. But it feels that it is just the introduction to a topic. Please,
write the continuation.
39. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (5 stars)
I find it clear in its exposition of the problems of modern psychology. In addition to the
ideas of “satisficing”, it displays the major ideas in the psychology of happiness
(hedonic treadmill), along with the theories of choice & decision making.
Clearly this is not for scholars as it is extremely diluted and slow at times; this is a
popular science book. Still, I could not put it down.
40. The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the
Renaissance (5 stars)
I could not put it down. It hit me at some point that I was at the intersection of
readability and scholarship. Clearly the value of this book lies beyond its readability:
Gottlieb is both a philosopher and a journalist (in the good sense), not a journalist who
writes about philosophy. He investigates and provides a fresh look at the material: For
instance what we bemoan as the flaws of Aristotelianism during the scholastic period
came 2000 years after his work. Aristotle had an empirical bent –his followers are the
ones to blame.
I liked his constant questioning of the labels put on philosophers and philosophies by
the second hand readers.
Clearly he missed a few authors who deserve real coverage like Algazali, but I take
what I can get.
The only other readable history of philosophy is Russell’s. This one was less hurriedly
put together.
Someone should bug the author to hurry with the sequel on Locke, Hume, etc.
41. Intellectuals in the Middle Ages (5 stars)
Excellent, be it only for the presentation of the difference between the pompous
scholastic thinker laboring in the academy and the other nonacademic humanist
laboring in the the “luxe calme et volupte” of his study.
Another of the attributes is the readability of the work Le Goff is a gifted writer.
42. Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition (5 stars)
I read the review of Simon Blackburn trashing the book: Eco made a few mistakes
concerning the two dogmas of empiricism (he confused Davidson’s work with Quine’s
first dogma). So I am sure many readers hesitated after a review by such a rigorous big
gun thinker as Blackburn.
When I started reading the book I was taken aback by the combination of depth and
the vividness of the style. Eco is sprightly and alive, something that cannot be said of
many philosophers dealing with the subject of categories.
The notion of categories is not trivial: you need a simple conditional prior to identify
an object; it is a simple mathematical fact. You need to know what a table is to see it in
the background separated from its surroundings. You need to know what a face is so
when it rotates you know it is still the same face. Computers have had a hard time with
such pattern recognition. A PRIOR category is a necessity. This was Kant’s intuition
(the so-called “rationalism”). This is also the field of semiotics as initially conceived.
Eco took it to greater levels with his notion of what I would call in scientific language a
compression, a “simplifation”. This leads to the major problem we face today: what if
the act of compressing is arbitrary?
Not just very deep but it is a breath of fresh air to see such a philosophical discussion
nondull, nondry, alive!
43. Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey Through Western

Philosophy from Plato to Popper (5 stars)
This is not a popularization /adult-education style presentation. Magee sees things

form the inside; it is his own formation of philosophical ideas & techniques that we
witness.
Magee was close enough to Popper to present us with his ideas first-hand (nobody
reads Popper; people read about him). He also debunks a few idiotic myths about
Wittgenstein as an atomist (Magee read W and realized that people read commentary
on him rarely the original).
Magee writes with the remarkable clarity of the English philosophers/thinkers.
44. Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World (5 stars)
Philosophy has been under severe challenge from science, literally eating up its
provinces: philosophy of mind went to neuroscience; philosophy of language to
Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, etc. This book shows that there is a need
for someone to just specialize in the TRUTH, its structure, its accessibility, its
INVARIANCE.
Aside from the purely philosophical answers that scientists were grappling with, the
book is like a manual for a new regimen in philosophy. It reviews everything from
epistemology to the logic of contingency, with insights here and there about such
topics as the observer biases (about computing probabilities when our existence has
been linked to a particular realization of the process).
I am not a philosopher but a probabilist; I found that this book just spoke to me. It
certainly rid me of my prejudice against modern philosophers.
45. A History of the Mind: Evolution and the Birth of Consciousness (5 stars)
Humphreys is the only person I know of who can work on nonhuman primates, write
philosophy, and edit a literary magazine.
The latter shows in this writing: I read this book in a single sitting. You may not agree
with the ideas on consciousness (I don’t) but you get a clear exposition of all the work
from Descartes to McGinn. Also if you want to figure out what Dennett is saying it
helps to read this book first.
46. Bull! : A History of the Boom, 1982–1999: What drove the Breakneck Market–
and What Every Investor Needs to Know About Financial Cycles (5 stars)
Maggie Mahar had the courage to take a look at what was behind all of this religious
belief in markets. Clearly I do not understand how she was able to work as a journalist
when she has the attitude and mindset of a truth-seeker. I spent some time looking at
the difference between her book and Lowenstein’s: not even possible to start
comparing. One needs to be a trader to value her work.
Read this book now; wait a while then read it again.
47. I Think, Therefore I Laugh (5 stars)
I found this copy last week at Waterstone in London . It made me feel the plane ride
was very short! I should have bought a couple. This is a great book for a refresher in
analytical philosophy: pleasant, clear. Great training for people who tend to forget
elementary relationships.
I did not know that JAP was a logician. Go buy this book!
The only competition is “Think” by Blackburn (rather boring).
48. The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century

Philosophy (4 stars)
This is a great book but I felt something cold inside of me while reading it. I don’t know
if it is cultural (the modern English philosopher’s fear of displaying passion) but I had
the feeling to talk to a plumber who developed expertise in abstract concepts and their
relationships just as if they were small plumbing problems fitting together under a
generalized plumbing theory. Perhaps philosophy needs to be treated like that, just
like engineering –but not for me. At least I give myself the illusion of doing something
more…literary.
Colin McGINN teaches us that we need nevertheless to master the art of clarity of both
thought and exposition. He write with perfect clarity: a clear, unburdened, unaffected,
UnFrench UnGerman philosophical prose.
The book has a presentation of the Kripke idea of naming as necessity of such clarity
that I felt actually smart reading it.
Other than that there is the feeling of drabness in part of the book of the type I got
once at a conference in an industrial city West of London.
49. Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (4 stars)
I became interested in this book while reading a review panning it in The Nation by
one Danny Postell (thanks to Arts & Letters Daily). Clearly it was visible that John Gray
was after a definition of humans that integrates our discoveries from cognitive science,
that we are just animals who are curse with intelligence, sufficient intelligence to
figure out things but insufficient to control our actions –what I call the ability to
rationalize (“much of the difference between us and other primates lies in our being
considerably better than them at explaining our behavior”). Postel (I have no clue who
he is and what kind of training he has in modern scientific thought but I am sure that
he is sufficiently burdened with a knowledge of humanities verbiage to get the book
wrong); Postel was panning Gray exactly for the reasons that would make this book
insightful. So I BOUGHT THIS BOOK BECAUSE OF A BAD REVIEW!
What struck me with this book is that Gray converges in opinion to the discoveries of
the New Science of Man –without quoting from neurobiology, cognitive science,
evolutionary psychology, the Kahneman-Tversky Heuristics & Biases Tradition. It is
remarkable that he identified the ills of the so-called humanist tradition without
assistance from the works on rationality posited by Kahneman and his peers.
This book is worth 4 stars because here we have a literary intellectual who manages to
break through the mud in his knowledge. It would have been worth 5 stars had Gray
read a few more works in scientific thought beyond Darwin. Anyway I am very
impressed with a literary intellectual capable of this empirical and realistic view of
man.
50. Mapping the Mind (5 stars)
I started my interest in neurobiology in December 1998 after reading a discussion by

Rita Carter in the FT showing that rational behavior under uncertainty and rational
decision making can come from a defect in the amygdala. Since then I’ve had five years
of reading more technical material (Gazzaniga et al is perhaps the most complete
reference on cognitive neuroscience) and thought that I transcended this book.
But it was not so. I picked up this book again last weekend and was both astonished at
a) the ease of reading , b) the clarity of the text and c) the breadth of the approach! I
was looking for a refresher as I am trying to capture a general idea of the functioning
of that black box and found exactly what I needed without the excess burden of
prominent textbooks.
Very pedagogical.
I read here and there comments by neuroscientists dissing the book over small details
perhaps invisible even to experts. I just realize that Carter should keep updating it, as it
is invaluable in my suitcase when I travel! I do not conceal my suspicion of “science
writers” and journalists more trained in communicating than understanding and
usually shallow babblers but Carter is an exception. Perhaps the science of the mind
requires breadth of knowledge that she has. She is a thinker in her own right not just a
“medical journalist”.
51. The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way (5 stars)
This critique of the computational theory of mind and the pan-adaptionist tradition is
clearly so honest that it goes after the ideas promoted by Fodor’s own 1983 watershed
book “The Modularity of Mind”. In brief the essay is an attack on massive modularity
by saying that there are things after all that escape the programming (encapsulation
and opacity are key: how can we talk about something OPAQUE? We know nothing
about a few critical things…).
Granted the book is horribly written (that is Fodor’s charm after all) but his
argumentation is so ferocious that he ends up loud & clear.
The man is critical of his own ideas, and of the current in thought that he he helped
create –one may use Fodor-1 against Fodor-2. Perhaps persons I hold in highest respect
are those who go after their own ideas!
Bravo Fodor. Even if I do not agree I can’t help admiring the man.
52. Consciousness: An Introduction (5 stars)
I am glad to find a complete book dealing with all aspects of consciousness in

CLEARLY written format, with graphs and tables to facilitate comprehension. The
book covers everything I had seen before from Artificial Intelligence to Philosophy to
Neurology to Evolutionary Biology.
Say one wants to get an idea of Dan Dennett’s theory of consciousness (without having
to get through Dennett’s circuitous, unfocused and evasive prose) or Searle’s Chinese
room argument or Turing’s test or Chalmer’s position or Churchland’s
neurophilosophy or a presentation of research on the neural correlates of
consciousness…Everything I could think about is there.
53. Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food: Taming Our Primal Instincts (5
stars)
I read the book once when it came out. Since then I’ve had the chance to reread it a
few times, discovering more and more layers as my interests take me in new
directions(for instance the discussion on the happiness treadmill goes to the core of
the current discussions in the economics of happiness). I now carry a copy on my trips
as I can kill time in airports by perusing random sections.
The book is so readable as to perhaps set a standard. Yet it is complete in the sense that
it covers more of the evolutionary thinking than meets the eye. I didn’t realize it until I
went to the site www.meangenes.org and got into the more technical research
material.
Reread it.
54. Why Stock Markets Crash: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems (5
stars)
The author aside from the problem of crashes presents an insightful exposition of
tipping points. I don’t know why his approach makes it clearer and deeper than those
of Watts and Barabasi –is it due to his using financial markets as a base? or his being an
expert at fat-tailed dynamics?
His work builds on the “abyssus abyssum invocat” (panic begets panics) and the
dynamics of compounding disequilibria. In addition the notion of “CRITICAL POINT”
is made very clear.
Honestly I don’t care for the idea of crashes; the same concepts can apply to sudden
and unexpected euphorias.
I learned more from this book than any other on disequilibrium.
55. The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century (5 stars)
Robert Shiller has the remarkable ability to think independently and the courage to
propose ideas that to middlebrow thinkers may sound speculative.
Think of what your reaction would have been had someone discussed risk sharing
(insurance) before it became popular. A lunacy people would have thought. Most risk
management is like that: we think backwards with the benefit of past history and find
these ideas obvious. They were not at the time.
Throughout his career Shiller stood for unpopular ideas and was proven right (his
1981 paper on volatility, his 2000 discussion of the bubble). I would read and re-read
this book.
56. Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (5 stars)
The book that carried the most influence on my thinking this year (I went back to it
half a dozen times).
This is a clearly written presentation of our inability to forecast our own behavior and
to predict our emotional reactions to positive and negative events. One would think
that the repetition of experiences with consistent forecasting biases would lead to
some correction but this is not the case.
We are more resilient than we think (“immune neglect”). The book also discusses the
reversion to baseline happiness after what we thought would bring a permanent
improvement in our moods (yet we never learn from it).
The most important part covers the “hindsight bias” how we see past misfortunes as
deterministic –and how we can confront negative emotions by making them even more
so (by creating a narrative that make the events appear unavoidable).
57. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (4 stars)
The book is a great exposition of modern scientific thinking and understanding of the
nature of man–but it spends some time on topics that are entirely obvious outside of
the humanities academia. Indeed Pinker gives them too much respect by honoring
them with such a lengthy reply.
His other two books are much better.
58. No Bull: My Life In and Out of Markets (5 stars)
As a speculator I learned to take the best from books and ideas without arguments
(many readers seem to be training to be shallow critics)–good insights are hard to
come by. One does not find these in the writings of a journalist. There are some things
personal to the author that might be uninteresting to some, but I take the package. The
man is one of the greatest traders in history. There are a few jewels in there.
The man did it. I’d rather listen to him than read better written but hollow prose from
some journalist-writer.
59. The Statistical Mechanics of Financial Markets (5 stars)
Very useful book, particularly in what concerns alternative L-Stable distributions.

True, not too versed in financial theory but I’d rather see the author erring on the side
of more physics than mathematical economics. As an author I don’t ask much from
books, just to deliver what they indend. This one does.
Clear historical description of Einstein/Bachelier. Hopefully one day we will call

derivatives pricing the Bachelier valuation.
The book in short provides an excellent perspective on the statistical approach to asset
price dynamics. Very clear and to the point.
60. Tartar Steppe (Verba Mundi) (5 stars)
I never understood why the book never made it in the Anglo-Saxon world. Il deserto is
one of the 20th century’s masterpieces.
61. A Guide to Econometrics — 4th Edition (5 stars)
The best intuition builder in both statistics and econometrics. I have been reading the
various editions throughout my career. Please, keep updating it, Peter Kennedy!
. . .
Work smarter not harder, sign up for my free weekly Brain Food newsletter.
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8-5-2020 61 Books Nassim Taleb Recommends you Read in his Own Words

61 Books Nassim Taleb Recommends you Read in

1. Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and the Politics of Chaos

Solid Book on Interventionism, Should be Mandatory Reading in Foreign Affairs.

3. The Secret of Fatima (5 Stars)

4. Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure (5 stars)

5. Modern Aramaic-English/English-Modern Aramaic Dictionary & Phrasebook:

The mathematics of extreme events, or the remote parts of the probability

There are two methods to consider in a risky strategy.

9. A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes (5 Stars)

Indispensable. As a practitioner of probability, I’ve read many book on the subject.

11. Probability, Random Variables and Stochastic Processes (5 Stars)

12. Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning (5 Stars)

13. Probability Theory (Courant Lecture Notes) (5 Stars)

14. Models.Behaving.Badly.: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to

Here is what I wrote in my endorsement: Emanuel Derman has written my kind of a

I read this book after completing my exposition of overcompensation, how a stressor or

17. The Opposing Shore (5 Stars)

19. Information: The New Language of Science (5 stars)

If you want an introduction to information theory, and, in a way, probability theory

A great book, a great investigation.

26. Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger, 3rd Edition (5 Stars)

A wonderful book on wisdom and decision-making written by a wise decision-maker.

27. The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (5 stars)

28. Statistical Models: Theory and Practice (5 stars)

29. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs (5 stars)

The Birth Stochastic Science: Rewriting the History of Medicine

From Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs, by Morton

e- It seems to me that discoverers are nonnerds.

30. Financial Derivatives: Pricing, Applications, and Mathematics (5 stars)

No financial book has the clarity of this text.

31. Thinking and Deciding (5 stars)

32. Critical Phenomena in Natural Sciences: Chaos, Fractals, Selforganization and

As I am teaching the statistical mechanics part of a graduate class in mathematics,I

I do not know of a better textbook.

suspicious of the assignment of specific functions, such as language, to anatomical

34. The Sunday Philosophy Club : An Isabel Dalhousie Mystery (5 stars)

35. How Nature Works: The Science of Self-organized Criticality (5 stars)

This book is a great attempt at finding some universality based on systems in a

36. Social Cognition: Making Sense of People (5 stars)

It is limpid, precise, illustrative, showing a wonderful clarity of mind.

37. The (Mis)behavior of Markets (5 stars)

Mandelbrot brought fractals into mathematics by going to the general public. He is

39. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (5 stars)

41. Intellectuals in the Middle Ages (5 stars)

43. Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey Through Western

This is not a popularization /adult-education style presentation. Magee sees things

Magee writes with the remarkable clarity of the English philosophers/thinkers.

44. Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World (5 stars)

Read this book now; wait a while then read it again.

47. I Think, Therefore I Laugh (5 stars)

The only competition is “Think” by Blackburn (rather boring).

48. The Making of a Philosopher: My Journey Through Twentieth-Century

49. Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (4 stars)

50. Mapping the Mind (5 stars)

I started my interest in neurobiology in December 1998 after reading a discussion by

51. The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way (5 stars)

52. Consciousness: An Introduction (5 stars)

I am glad to find a complete book dealing with all aspects of consciousness in

I learned more from this book than any other on disequilibrium.

56. Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (5 stars)

His other two books are much better.

58. No Bull: My Life In and Out of Markets (5 stars)