Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Black Swan’s full title is “Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” He calls any occurrence that is completely unknowingly out of the blue a Black Swan, after the ‘a swan has to be white’ concept was broken when a black swan was found in Australia. He talks about probability, on an almost philosophical level and how people, especially acting as a group as we normally do, cannot imagine unforeseen events, and to further compound the problem learn all the wrong lessons when said Black Swan happens.

There are several interesting asides: A guest is amazed at Umberto Eco’s 30,000 volume library and asks astonished, “Mr. Eco, have you actually read all these books?” Eco replies, “What use is a library that you have already read?”

Bits of it get pretty heavy but he tries to explain his rather innovative thinking in a relaxed narrative. He is scathing, in an amusing way, of all probability experts from academia, business and government, arguing that since their training all comes from the same school of thought, Gaussian, they are also unable, by training, to cope with the improbable. His greatest mentor is Mandelbrot, and is downright rude about Platonic thought.

The man is hugely successful as an academic, and has made 50 odd mill as a trader. Half of which was made on just 10 separate days of his professional trading career. The Nasdaq crash was a Black Swan for most, just make sure it is a positive one.

Since the current economic crisis began to bite, which he pretty much predicted and out of which he made millions, he has been brought in from the cold, at least by the business community, and now speaks all over for anybody who can afford him.

He has got to be one of the few thinkers that actually makes money out of his ramblings.