Sometimes Nassim Nicholas Taleb is led astray by his contrarianism, but then that is his point: If you don't take risks, you don't get results. This is a bold, entertaining, clever book, richly crammed with insights, stories, fine phrases and intriguing asides. Does it achieve its goal, or does it cram and twist the world on to a Procrustean bed of one theory, thereby somewhat contradicting its own empirical and pragmatic outlook? I am not sure. I will have to read it again. And again.