Tom’ s iconic books

1. Tom’s iconic books

2. Fooled 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

3. Fooled 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 solvers—groups of people with diverse tools—consistently 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. It’s emotional and immoral. It deludes you. It is pigheaded, secretive, and weak willed. Oh, and it’s also a bigot.”

4. Fooled 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 solvers—groups of people with diverse tools—consistently 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. It’s emotional and immoral. It deludes you. It is pigheaded, secretive, and weak willed. Oh, and it’s also a bigot.”

5. An 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 FisherEmpires 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

6. “A 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 Ike’s 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 Rhiems—entirely 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

7. “[Eisenhower] chafed miserably as General MacArthur’s 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

8. Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets—Nassim Nicholas Taleb

9. “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.”“We underestimate the share of randomness in just about everything, a point that might not merit a book—except 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