Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

People constantly make choices, arrive at decisions, and take risks. Savers buy stocks, doctors perform operations, poker players figure the odds, and business managers launch new products. Without the instruments of risk management, such decisions would be impossible, because no one could figure out the likelihood of success. Yet the idea that we need not listen to soothsayers for advice is less than five hundred years old. This book blends biography with history and science to show how famous thinkers like Pascal, Bernoulli, Bayes, Keynes, Markowitz, Arrow and von Neumann paved the way from superstition to the supercomputer. But Bernstein tells of others as well, less known but equally important in developing the theory and practice of risk management. The book also explains significant concepts including probability, uncertainty, the distinction between chance and skill, the interactions between gambling and investing, and rational versus irrational decision-making.--From publisher description.