Title: Tom
1Toms iconic books
2Fooled 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, Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and
Amos Tversky A Mind of Its Own How Your Brain
Distorts and Deceives, Cordelia Fine
3Fooled 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 solversgroups of people with diverse
toolsconsistently 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. Its emotional and immoral. It
deludes you. It is pigheaded, secretive, and weak
willed. Oh, and its also a bigot.
4Fooled 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 solversgroups of people with diverse
toolsconsistently 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. Its emotional and immoral. It
deludes you. It is pigheaded, secretive, and weak
willed. Oh, and its also a bigot.
5An 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
LevinsonTube The Invention of Television
David Marshall Fisher Empires of Light
Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to
Electrify the World Jill JonnesThe Soul of a
New Machine Tracy KidderRosalind Franklin The
Dark Lady of DNA Brenda MaddoxThe Blitzkrieg
Myth John Mosier
6A 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 Ikes 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 Rhiemsentirely 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 EisenhowerSource David Irving,
The War Between the Generals Inside the Allied
High Command
7Eisenhower chafed miserably as General
MacArthurs 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
8Fooled by Randomness The Hidden Role of Chance
in Life and the Markets Nassim Nicholas Taleb
9This 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 bookexcept 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