The Black Swan

A provocative exploration of rare, high-impact events that lie outside regular expectations, The Black Swan argues that we systematically underestimate uncertainty and overfit tidy narratives to randomness. Taleb distinguishes Mediocristan from Extremistan, warns against the illusion of understanding and retrospective predictability, and advocates robust decision-making—barbell strategies, optionality, and antifragility—to survive and benefit from the unpredictable.