Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series is an investigation of luck, uncertainty, probability, opacity, human error, risk, disorder, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand, in nonoverlapping and standalone books. All four volumes—Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and the special expanded edition of The Bed of Procrustes, updated with more than 50 percent new material—are now together in one ebook bundle.

ANTIFRAGILE

“Startling . . . richly crammed with insights, stories, fine phrases and intriguing asides.”—The Wall Street Journal

Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. What is crucial is that the antifragile loves errors, as it incurs small harm and large benefits from them. Spanning politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine in an interdisciplinary and erudite style, Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world.

THE BLACK SWAN

“The Black Swan changed my view of how the world works.”—Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate

A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random and more predictable. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. In this groundbreaking and prophetic book, Taleb shows that black swan events underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives, and yet we—especially the experts—are blind to them.

FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS

“[Fooled by Randomness] is to conventional Wall Street wisdom approximately what Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses were to the Catholic Church.”—Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker

Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? Fooled by Randomness is about luck: more precisely, about how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill—the markets—Fooled by Randomness is an irreverent, eye-opening, and endlessly entertaining exploration of one of the least understood forces in our lives.

THE BED OF PROCRUSTES

“Taleb’s crystalline nuggets of thought stand alone like esoteric poems.”—Financial Times

This collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses Taleb’s major ideas in ways you least expect. The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from Greek mythology: the story of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical views of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness.

Reader Reviews

Fabian

(5/5)

Jan 18, 2025

My absolute favorite author, living or dead.

Karl

2017 I have come to absorb Taleb's ideas, to the extent that some of my friends who haven't read him probably know the ideas quite well just by osmosis. His effect on me includes the following:1. I trust the time tested more than what obviously is true.2. My default position is that experts are frauds.3. Old institution can be trusted to do things right, but their beliefs can be arbitrarily ridiculous. 4. Systems need volatility. If you micromanage and remove every day stresses the system can

Gavin

The most vibrant presentation of sceptical empiricism since Dawkins stopped being beautiful.Black Swan is a furious pompous attack on macroeconomics, journalism, and risk modelling via heuristics and biases; so it is an amazing introduction to modelling. But it's also an entire original worldview, applying to history, policy, science, and personal conduct. This is taken even further (too far?) in Antifragile, which is more or less a work of evolutionary epistemology, or evolutionary practical et...

Jose Miguel

Rumsfeld (you don't have to like him to appreciate the net quote) once said "...We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones."Nassim Taleb's Incerto is one of those tools that help us deal with this predicament, especially in a...

Natalía Papadopoúlou

(4/5)

That's a heavy book in every possible way. I had a hard time deciding what to feel about it as I was torn between the ideas illustrated vs the way it is written. I felt some observations I had were finally justified (with mathematical models even) but I hated the writing. The blocks were messed up alternating between personal stories, scientific evidence, evidence and theories/research from other authors. I just felt it could have been in better order and explained with so much less text. In the...

Terry Tucker

(1/5)

The pearls of wisdom and information are tucked away in this book. The metaphors and allegory are excellent at conveying the ideas and contest, the problem is they are buried and the book is tedious to read. There is a lot of rambling and what could have been succinctly covered in a few pages devolves into chapter. Buying the bundle does not make it any easier. I am completely underwhelmed and most certainly have buyers remorse. The only real good book is the original - The Black Swan.

Bruno Figares

A must read seriewIrreverent, witty, profound.I came into NNT's other book, fooled by randomness through a recomendation from a friend. Immediately decided I was going to read all of them

Hari Seldon

Great reading. The last book wasn't as good as the others, but it's interesting and shows the author views on life and other matters.

Narendra

One of the best series of books i ever read . Antifragile is just amazing .

Kevin Mackey

Brilliant. The most original and profound work written in the 21st century (that I have encountered)

Vaishnav Alapppatt Ranjan

Exceptional books. Definitely in the top of list.

Taylor Newill

a billion monkeys might write the Iliad, but what will they write next

Bertalan

Summary: great ideas inside, but some parts can be (and should be) skipped.The good:Taleb has some fantastic ideas, including, but not limited to: ergodicity (given enough time, if there's even a very slight chance that something happens, it will happen), the non-linear (ie disproportionally large) impact of rare events, evidence of absence vs absence of evidence, just to name a few. These will give the reader food for thought for a long time, and some of these ideas can be applied directly in d...

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Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, The Bed of Procrustes

Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, The Bed of Procrustes

Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, The Bed of Procrustes

More books from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Fooled By Randomness & The Black Swan: Two Books In One

Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails: Real World Preasymptotics, Epistemology, and Applications

Robustezza e fragilità

Reader Reviews