Rating: 
Summary: not formal enough for academic purposes, but well written
Review: Consider this book a very good effort to narrate how several men in history have contributed to our understanding of risk and its consequences, mainly in financial decisions. However, it is not formal enough to be used for academic purposes, but sometimes gets too dense for casual reading. It is, nonetheless, an excellent compilation for those of us thirsty for knowledge on history and decision-making regarding financial situations for non-professional purposes.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely Worth the Risk
Review: Bernstein, like Heilbroner, O'Wilson, Adler, et.al., brings such tremendous illumination to complex disciplines. In short, this tremendous work not only makes one smarter, BUT makes them sound smarter too. Thank you Abbe!
Rating:
Summary: Hype Over Substance
Review: From the reviews of this book you would think that all the unknowns of risk would suddenly be revealed. Although quite interesting this book is not all that revealing or suprising. Fun to read - just did not live up to the hype.
Rating:
Summary: Illuminating
Review: I am amazed by those great contemporary minds of of the Renaissance age. Lest we think that our IT age is the one that has made today's global finanical markets possible, this books shows me that for most parts, the foundation of our current financial world had actually been laid down partly by those seemly out-of-the-world mathematicians. I wonder how they had managed to unravel the Laws of God - Law of Large Numbers and Normal Distibution etc. - and apply them to real life. Their belief in an orderly and predictable God, - as opposed to a chaotic and uncertain God - had certainly motivated them to believe that there exist truths in the Universe that await them to discover!
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining, superficial and occasionally misleading
Review: The more you already know about this subject the less you will like this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not what you think
Review: This is meant to be a story about risk. As a story, it only modestly succeeds, although the author is obviously not comfortable in the medium of history, and is given over to numerous redundnacies. As an essay about risk, it is sorely deficient, giving only the most superficial features, racing over complicated opportunities to explicate, and failing to plumb the depths enough to give satisfaction. Risk, of course, is a sub-species of probability. That's the book's thesis. I'd recommend a good book on probability theory before wasting my time with this.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful, illuminating and valuable
Review: An important and needed work.One that helpfully and carefully illuminates the evolution of risk and offers a well argued framework for a perspective from which readers can on the place asn understanding of the notion of risk in their own lives..... Infact, Bernstein does well to subtly encourage a reader to re-evalute his/her acknowledgement of risk and remain alerted to the importnace of its' purposeful handling. A much needed work equal in to other more scientific traces of related work in mathematics and such like. Well worth having thjis book for a host of reason, if not at least for reference after initial reading.
Rating:
Summary: Immensely Disappointing
Review: Given the hype, I'm immensely disappointed with this book. It's an easy read, and almost a jocular style. But its substance is hidden in sentential gems covered by irrelevant and often uninteresting history of probability history, development, and theory. The substance of this book could be reduced to a short essay; most of the book is redundant storytelling that is only of incidental interest. And those few and far-apart nuggets are all too often sophomoric and unable to sustain this reader's interest. This book is a classic example of an author who constantly looses his theme by trying to convert a brief essay into a book. When key issues arise, usually one sentence per chapter, they are buried and too easily missed for the lack of the author's development. Overall, a very superficial treatment from too many vantages to be a satisfactory read.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: It is not true that you have to like the subject matter - math people or history buffs will find this book, in a word, amazing. Bernstein explains very difficult and mathematically complicated concepts in a very straight forward and easily understandable manner. I have always thought that quite a bit of the expalnation of calculas was a perpetuation of the veil of the secret brotherhood of the obtuse. Bernstein explains Markowitz in the most unbelievebly direct and understandable fashion. Even better, the bibliography. Buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: A "History of Probability" book with a good packaging.
Review: As a person who works in accounting area, I am always amazed by the genius of the double-entry method of book keeping. Hence when I read a review that the book includes this as one of the attempts to contain risk, I decided to buy it hoping to hear more about the making of the method. Unfortunately, there is only one paragraph mentioned. The rest of the book is dedicated mostly to the story about probability and a few other chapters on something else. If you regard "Gods" as the ones who throw dice and you want to know the story of people who wanted to predict the outcome of the throw and how much to bet on it, you should read the book. Otherwise, there is nothing much regarding the attempts to overcome other kinds of risks, which are no less important than probability. Hence, the naming of the book is somewhat misleading. Instead, it should merely read " History of Probability" which may shy some readers like myself away.
|
