The Bed of Procrustes - (Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Paperback)

About the Book

"With fifty percent more material than the hardcover"--Page 4 of cover.

Book Synopsis

The author of the modern classics The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb expresses major ideas in ways you least expect in this collection of aphorisms and meditations--now expanded with fifty percent more material than the hardcover.

The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from the Greek myth of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection, either by stretching them or by cutting their limbs. It represents Taleb's view of modern civilization's hubristic side effects--modifying humans to satisfy technology, blaming reality for not fitting economic models, inventing diseases to sell drugs, defining intelligence as what can be tested in a classroom, and convincing people that employment is not slavery. Playful and irreverent, these aphorisms will surprise you by exposing self-delusions you have been living with but never recognized.

With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical values of courage, elegance, and erudition with the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phonies.

Review Quotes

Praise for Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"The most prophetic voice of all." --GQ

"The hottest thinker in the world." --Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times (London)

"[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne." --The Wall Street Journal

"Idiosyncratically brilliant." --Niall Ferguson, Los Angeles Times

About the Author

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.