Tom’s
iconic
books
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life
and the Markets, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We
know? Philip Tetlock
The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates
Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies, Scott Page
The Wisdom of Crowds,
James Surowiecki
Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to
Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould
Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases,
Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky
Daniel
A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives,
Cordelia Fine
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the
Markets, Nassim Nicholas Taleb “This book is about luck disguised and perceived as non-luck (that is,
skills) and more generally randomness disguised and perceived as non-randomness. It manifests itself in the shape of the lucky
fool, defined as a person who benefited from a disproportionate share of luck but attributed his success to some other, generally
precise reason.”
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas
Taleb
Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We know? Philip
Tetlock
“A fox, the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of disciplines, and is better able to
improvise in response to changing events, is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing,
toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill defined problems.”
The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups,
Firms, Schools, and Societies, Scott Page “Diverse groups of problem solvers—groups of
people with diverse tools—consistently outperformed groups of the best and the brightest. If I formed two groups, one random
(and therefore diverse) and one consisting of the best individual performers, the first group almost always did better. ... Diversity
trumped ability.”
The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki
Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, Stephen Jay
Gould
Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Daniel Kahneman,
Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky
A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives, Cordelia Fine
“Your brain has some shifty habits that leave the truth distorted and disguised. Your brain is vainglorious. It’s emotional and immoral.
It deludes you. It is pigheaded, secretive, and weak willed. Oh, and it’s also a bigot.”
“This book
is about luck disguised and perceived as non-luck (that is, skills) and more
generally randomness disguised and perceived as non-randomness. It manifests
itself in the shape of the lucky fool, defined as a person who benefited from a
disproportionate share of luck but attributed his success to some other, generally
precise reason.”
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“A fox, the thinker who
knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of disciplines, and is better
able to improvise in response to changing events, is more successful in predicting
the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one
tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill defined problems.”
Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We know? Philip Tetlock
The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies , Scott Page
“Diverse groups of problem solvers—groups of people with diverse tools—
consistently outperformed groups of the best and the brightest. If I formed two
groups, one random (and therefore diverse) and one consisting of the best
individual performers, the first group almost always did better. ... Diversity trumped
ability.”
The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki
Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould
Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky
“Your brain has some shifty
habits that leave the truth distorted and disguised. Your brain is vainglorious. It’s
emotional and immoral. It deludes you. It is pigheaded, secretive, and weak willed.
Oh, and it’s also a bigot.”
A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives , Cordelia Fine
An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
of the United States —Charles Beard (1913)
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the
World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
—Marc Levinson
Tube: The Invention of Television
—David & Marshall Fisher
Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse,
and the Race to Electrify the World —Jill Jonnes
The Soul of a New Machine —Tracy Kidder
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
—Brenda Maddox
The Blitzkrieg Myth —John Mosier
“A man of great mediocrity.” —General George Patton
about General Omar Bradley ...... “A third-rate general. He
never did anything or won any battle that any other
general could not have won as well or better.” —General
Omar Bradley about Sir Bernard Montgomery ...... “If you
want to end the war in any reasonable time, you will have
to remove Ike’s hand from the control of the land battle.”
—Sir Bernard Montgomery about General Dwight
Eisenhower ...... “One thing that might help win this war is
to get someone to shoot King.” —General Dwight
Eisenhower about Admiral Ernest King ...... “Eisenhower,
though supposed to be running the land war, is on the
golf links at Rhiems—entirely detached and taking
practically no part in running the war.” —Sir Alan Brooke
...... “If the unhelpful British attitude continues, then I
shall go home.” —General Dwight Eisenhower
Source: David Irving, The War Between the Generals: Inside the Allied High Command
“[Eisenhower] chafed miserably as
General MacArthur’s aide in the
Philippines, and in the end was
promoted to lieutenant colonel only
because General George C. Marshall
remembered him, from years of
inspecting dreary peacetime army
bases, as the best bridge player in
the U.S. Army.” —Ulysses S. Grant, Michael Korda
Fooled by
Randomness: The
Hidden Role of
Chance in Life and
the Markets
—Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“This book is about luck disguised and perceived as
non-luck (that is, skills) and more generally randomness
disguised and perceived as non-randomness. It manifests
itself in the shape of the lucky fool, defined
as a person who benefited from a disproportionate share
of luck but attributed his success to some other,
generally precise reason.”
“We underestimate the share of randomness in just
about everything, a point that might not merit a
book—except when it is the specialist who is the fool
of all fools.”
“Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild
success is attributable to variance.”
Source: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance
in Life and the Markets —Nassim Nicholas Taleb