Against the Gods - Hardcover

Bernstein, Peter L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471121045 ISBN 13: 9780471121046

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 1996

Synopsis

A Business Week, New York Times Business, and USA Today Bestseller

"Ambitious and readable . . . an engaging introduction to the oddsmakers, whom Bernstein regards as true humanists helping to release mankind from the choke holds of superstition and fatalism."
—The New York Times

"An extraordinarily entertaining and informative book."
—The Wall Street Journal

"A lively panoramic book . . . Against the Gods sets up an ambitious premise and then delivers on it."
—Business Week

"Deserves to be, and surely will be, widely read."
—The Economist

"[A] challenging book, one that may change forever the way people think about the world."
—Worth

"No one else could have written a book of such central importance with so much charm and excitement."
—Robert Heilbroner author, The Worldly Philosophers

"With his wonderful knowledge of the history and current manifestations of risk, Peter Bernstein brings us Against the Gods. Nothing like it will come out of the financial world this year or ever. I speak carefully: no one should miss it."
—John Kenneth Galbraith Professor of Economics Emeritus, Harvard University

In this unique exploration of the role of risk in our society, Peter Bernstein argues that the notion of bringing risk under control is one of the central ideas that distinguishes modern times from the distant past. Against the Gods chronicles the remarkable intellectual adventure that liberated humanity from oracles and soothsayers by means of the powerful tools of risk management that are available to us today.

"An extremely readable history of risk."
—Barron's

"Fascinating . . . this challenging volume will help you understand the uncertainties that every investor must face."
—Money

"A singular achievement."
—Times Literary Supplement

"There's a growing market for savants who can render the recondite intelligibly-witness Stephen Jay Gould (natural history), Oliver Sacks (disease), Richard Dawkins (heredity), James Gleick (physics), Paul Krugman (economics)-and Bernstein would mingle well in their company."
—The Australian

About this title

Review:

With the stock market breaking records almost daily, leaving longtime market analysts shaking their heads and revising their forecasts, a study of the concept of risk seems quite timely. Peter Bernstein has written a comprehensive history of man's efforts to understand risk and probability, beginning with early gamblers in ancient Greece, continuing through the 17th-century French mathematicians Pascal and Fermat and up to modern chaos theory. Along the way he demonstrates that understanding risk underlies everything from game theory to bridge-building to winemaking.

From the Publisher:

To what degree should we rely on our past to determine our future? This riveting book describes how the rational process of risk taking propelled the progress of science and enterprise into the modern world of speed, power, instant communication, and sophisticated finance. Risk management is now an indispensable skill whose applications range from allocating wealth through planning a family to wearing a seatbelt. Drawing upon history and biography to trace the development of its concepts, the author explains the origin of risk management--the basics of probability, sampling, regression to the mean, game theory, and rational versus irrational decision making. Bernstein introduces complex concepts via an accessible, entertaining narrative between the great minds behind the ideas. Against the Gods features the epic quests and questions of great thinkers such as Pascal, Fermat and von Neumann who have embarked on a reworkable adventure of intellectual discovery, proving that the future is more than just the whim of the gods, that men and women are not passive before nature.

About this edition

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0471121045
• ISBN 13: 9780471121046
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 383