The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Allen Lane ₤20, 400 pages
FT bookshop price: ₤16

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s last book, Fooled by Randomness, argued that there is a human tendency to recognise false patterns and attribute causes in random processes. It was full of anecdotes, irretrievably opinionated and informed by a range of reading. You would expect these war stories and strength of views from a trader and hedge fund manager, but not the erudition.