Against the Gods : The Remarkable Story of Risk

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Summary: Delightful and thought provoking book
Review: This is one of my favourite books. It stimulated me to think about stock and stock option trading in news ways. It is so readable it served as a beach holiday book! Well done Mr. Bernstein.

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Summary: Regurgitation of Good Sources
Review: I believe both the layman and the risk professional will find this book tedious. Professionals will be familiar with more entertaining sources. For instance, "Prisoner's Dilemma" by William Poundstone is a lot more fun to read and presents a better treatment of game theory. There are better sources for other topics covered, too.

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Summary: Very interesting approach to Quantitative Analysis.. Really
Review: I never enjoyed any of my stat. or quant. classes in graduate school, I wish I had read this book first. Bernstein is a good story teller who adeptly blends human faces and quantitative theories to tell the history of man's understanding of risk. The book drags a little in some spots and wanders in others, but is still worth the read. Against The Gods is user friendly enough for the everyday reader who might have trouble calculating sales tax, while offering the more studied students a refreshing dose of perspective to accompany their book smarts.

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Summary: Excellent read!
Review: Peter Bernstein's AGAINST THE GODS is an extremely informative and entertaining telling of the story of risk. Through the course of the book, he elucidates the basic concepts of risk in an informal yet highly effective manner. He delves into the human aspect quite a bit; we are privy to the trials and tribulations of those ingenious men who first pioneered the ideas behind chance and risk.

The primary purpose of AGAINST THE GODS is not as an introduction to risk management. For those who buy this book expecting such, you will be heavily disappointed. Instead, this is a terrific primer about risk and its history that will pique the interest of any person who has had little formal background in the science of risk management. The main strength of AGAINST THE GODS lies in its astounding clarity which does not come at the expense of comprehensiveness. Bernstein assumes no prior experience with mathematics or risk management. It is this accessibility which makes this the first book on risk you should buy.

In summary, I highly recommend this to anyone who has at least a passing interest in chance or risk. For those with experience in risk management, the history of risk presented in AGAINST THE GODS will still be very interesting. However, do not expect any of the ideas to be new.

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Summary: Stocks go to extremes and this book ponders why
Review: Bernstein takes more time to get to what might be useful to the reader than he ought, but his effort culminates in quantifying how winners and losers are made in financial markets from past to present. Given the present crash in stock price there are many who could benefit from reading "Against the Gods".

The book traces the beginnings of probability theory and its evolution into insurance companies and ultimately to its contribution to the use of derivatives as a means of reducing uncertainty in the outcomes of "futures" transactions.

The book could have dealt more with behavioral economics, but when it does engage it delivers a message that is beneficial. All students, high school thru college, should be taught about risk measurement.

Man's capacity for self deception is what generates irrational decision making. The book covers this subject in ways that will not fail to impress the rader. Far better it would be if we could learn to be less emotionally involved with our investments and more by the numbers. Professional fund manager Robert Olstein's Financial Alert Fund examplifys a by the numbers value approach along with intense scrutiny as to how companies keep their books. He buys companies with excess cash flow for half of what he thinks they're worth and sells them when they go up 30%. He follows the prescription outlined in this book and beats the S&P index yearly. His is a real life example of the value of buying and selling with no emotional attachment to the investment. This book will help you understand why this approach works.

Given the collapse of the CPA-Consulting firm of Arthur Anderson and the unveiling of current corporate accounting abuses would suggest that we all could benefit from a rise in the level of our financial sophistication. This book is a good first step.

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Summary: The inevitable nature of risk
Review: Dear Amazon.com Reader,

All I can say for starters is "what an excellent work!". This book is an amazing account of the history of risk and it's role in society from the distant past, through the ages and right up to the present day. It gives a charming and fascinating insight into the world of risk taking and risk management, told with all the ease of a great communicator whose subject fits them like a kid glove. I read this book alongside a heavier tome on Risk Management - Mr Philippe Jorion's excellent "Value at Risk: The New Benchmark for Managing Financial Risk" that is - and I am thankful that I did, because not only did it act as a much welcomed counter-balance to some hefty risk theory but it also introduced me, in a light and accessible manner, to some of the concepts that I had been struggling with - an experience much like as if one could access a trusted source of profound knowledge on a subject, in my case Risk Management, without feeling that your brain has been given the once over with a common kitchen liquidizer.

An excellent, informative and interesting read. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a thorough, intelligent and readable introduction to risk.

However, one word of caution, this book has not been written to spoon-feed the less than enquiring mind, and to get the best out of it one really has to be a little more proactive and participatory. In some places it's like as if there are little puzzles left for the reader to think-out for themselves - which I find really quite engaging, a rare treat, the nearest thing to interaction one could get with the author via their written word.

Best regards,

[e-mail]

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Summary: The elaborate stupidity of the stock market
Review: I recommend this book for its great amount of culture and the extensive view of the stock market it provides (although its point is sometimes hard to get)
As a value investor, this book has helped me understand why everybody else is not also a value investor (although Warren Buffett sometimes appears in this book, he is rapidly dismissed)
Not only are the main stock market actors stupid, but they are rationalizing it. This means that they are not likely to change soon. For one that intends to profit from that stupidity, this is basically good news.

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Summary: wasted erudition
Review: What a waste of erudition!
A wormanlike treatment of a fascinating subject.
This well researched book is a hybrid that is completely useless to practitioners and, I guess, rather tedious to non-professionals.

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Summary: Pedantic Drudgery
Review: Unfortunately this book ends up reading more like an encyclopedia than a 'remarkable story'. Bernstein's account of risk is painfully dull and poorly related to risk's wide ranging applications. The closing chapters on financial markets and derivatives feel like they were just thrown in, providing an awkward ending to a pointless trip.

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Summary: Love it.
Review: I play a lot of poker and really enjoy games where brain and hard work gives you an edge. I think this book was fantastic and from a historical perspective it was very educational.