On The Black Swan

I read and enjoyed this book a while back, but I neglected to review it. My thought was that it was far enough in the product's life-cycle that whatever can be said for it, good or ill, had already been said.

I am writing now only quickly to say that this book is amazing. While my marginal notes show that I didn't completely agree with Taleb's method or conclusions, this book has amazing impact. I am, even at my young age, pretty ossified in my positions about how the market works for all participants. What this book did is make me reevaluate those positions that were once set in stone. I have to admit, this is no easy task. I even sought out, and bought (though not yet read) the book that was the biggest influence on Taleb, The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence. I look forward to seeing the basis for the thought in The Black Swan.

I advise you to purchase this book to help you reevaluate your views on the market. Even if you don't agree with him, Taleb's book will make you stronger by forcing you to engage with his mode of thinking. I write this because I came across an unexpected and unqualified endorsement by another respected radical thinker: Daniel Kahneman in his recent Thinking, Fast and Slow. It seems counter-intuitive at first, but both men are in the same project but coming from different angles: How does the market fail, and why.

Untitled for the Holidays

I have written
Many poems –
About you;
And
About death.
They were mine;
Personal and unshared.
But this poem,
This poem is yours –
About both.
For the first time.
Yours.
But you can’t
Hear it.

Americans in Paris -- Charles Glass

Wars don't just happen at the front lines. They don't just happen at policy level with Kings and Presidents and Generals in the back office.

They also take place on the home-front.

Glass examines the home-front through the eyes of people who were out of place -- in Paris.

Through an exhaustive look at the world of Paris as lived by Americans during and just before the Nazi occupation, we get a different sense of the war than I have ever been presented. It is in depth, and we see how several Americans lived and survived the unique challenges. Some rose to the challenge, others did their best to survive. Their stories are here. They are many, and the lens of focus moves around so at times it is difficult to recenter the thread of the narrative. However the book unfolds in chronological time, so if you have a background of the history, it is easy to keep track of the temporal aspect. The book is interesting and novel, but maybe not necessary. Perhaps there are too many 'stars'. Perhaps there are too few.