Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

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It's a hit!

This book came highly recommended by some deep thinkers, and it is very good. This was way more of a history book than I thought it would be. I th... (show more)

This book came highly recommended by some deep thinkers, and it is very good. This was way more of a history book than I thought it would be. I thought that it would be more of an actionable ( sorry for the buzzword) book: one that had some specific lessons I could apply to investing. I suspect that they are there, hidden beneath the surface, but my frantic, rushed, needing a quick fix mind was could not grasp the lessons in one pass. The author gives off a renaissance man feel that he has a grasp of a large variety of surbects, much like the people he is writing about. I am not there right now. I definitely had trouble keeping track of all the players as the author frequently referred back to previously mentioned risk developers/philosophers. After finishing the book I thought that I should immediately reread in order to get them all straight. (show less)

 

 

by Facebook User

No, it's a flop!

Interesting book that unfortunately fails to fulfill its early promise. By the time Bernstein gets into modern risk management, he essentially has... (show more)

Interesting book that unfortunately fails to fulfill its early promise. By the time Bernstein gets into modern risk management, he essentially has to place most of these techniques in a black box -- they are too complex (or at least he believes they are) for us to understand. (show less)

 

 

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  A thrilling read for anybody who is interested in 1) the history of ideas, and 2) probability and statistics (measuring stuff, predicting stuff). The first part of the book is mostly celeb-ographies of some of the giants of math: Fibonacci, Pascal, Fermat, Bernoulli, and Gauss, with very good layman's descriptions of the concepts and even a couple of bonus math problems for those so inclined. Once we get to the beginnings of modern finance, starting with Bachelier, the story becomes more fo... (show more)

  A thrilling read for anybody who is interested in 1) the history of ideas, and 2) probability and statistics (measuring stuff, predicting stuff). The first part of the book is mostly celeb-ographies of some of the giants of math: Fibonacci, Pascal, Fermat, Bernoulli, and Gauss, with very good layman's descriptions of the concepts and even a couple of bonus math problems for those so inclined. Once we get to the beginnings of modern finance, starting with Bachelier, the story becomes more focused in certain fields of economics, following Keynes, von Neumann and Morgenstern (game theory), Markowitz (Modern Portfolio Theory), Kahneman and Tversky (Prospect Theory), Thaler (behavioral finance), Arrow (general equilibrium theory), Black Scholes and Merton (option theory). He finishes with a too-brief discussion of chaos theory. Throughout the story, Bernstein does an excellent job of providing context: he skillfully weaves in past concepts to show the continuity of the story, while teasingly highlighting when certain developments anticipated later breakthroughs. And he wins major kudos for including not just one but two quatrains by Omar Khayyam. (show less)

   

   

  by Facebook User on Oct 03, 2009 at 12:48PM

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  I found this book very interesting reading. It was leant to me by a friend after I had read a similar book about hedge funds. While all the mathematical therory meant very little to me. I could still grasp the underlying message of the risk principle and basically that is is no good to put all of your eggs in one basket. The historical references are also fascinating in that they show you the evolution of the principles and theorum that we use every day and the difficulty with which simple... (show more)

  I found this book very interesting reading. It was leant to me by a friend after I had read a similar book about hedge funds. While all the mathematical therory meant very little to me. I could still grasp the underlying message of the risk principle and basically that is is no good to put all of your eggs in one basket. The historical references are also fascinating in that they show you the evolution of the principles and theorum that we use every day and the difficulty with which simple statistics were derived in the past. This is quite a fascinating read not just for those involved in the practice of risk management but for anyone wanting to understand the business of casinos or insurance or anyone who finds the theory of the odds fun. It is a bit long but every page puts forward something new for the reader. (show less)

   

   

  by Gina Paul-Schwartz on Sep 07, 2009 at 11:13AM

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