233 books Nassim Taleb mentioned, ranked!

Nassim Taleb
Credit: Sarah Josephine Taleb
One of the reasons I hate book lists is that if someone asks me the stupid question "what's the best book you've ever read?", my answer would depend on the time of the day, bicycling conditions, freshness of the last meal, ambient temperature, & current price of OTM options.

— Nassim Taleb

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This list is curated from 289 mentions and sorted by most mentioned, then by date of most recent mention. The more a book is mentioned, the more likely it's recommended and a favorite... or they just like talking about it a lot!

Last updated: .

  1. Who We Are and How We Got Here
    by David Reich

    Mediterranean cultures actually have tall shaming. "homo lungus raro sapiens", "tawil habil", "Troppo lungo non fu mai buono", "Uomo lungo, testa corta" etc. See Reich (2018) @Steve_Sailer The closer to old settled societies, the more tall shaming. Reverse in roaming hunters https://t.co/9lANTtXnuU

    — Nassim Taleb

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  2. The Count of Monte Cristo
    by Alexandre Dumas

    1) The taste of (cold) revenge is by far the most underrated human experience. Not for cowards. Not be good for society except when revenge does not lead to more revenge. 2) Written ~170 y ago. I've never read more limpid more recent page turner.#Lindy = #ergodic seller! https://t.co/ODPZoPB6pb

    — Nassim Taleb

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  3. Safe Haven
    by Mark Spitznagel

    Spencer gets it. (All explicitly in the book"Safe Haven".)https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-04-04-2023/card/wait-your-hedge-fund-made-how-much--WRy8YA3lZ9404Qx3unVT

    — Nassim Taleb

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  4. Essais
    by Michel de Montaigne

    ILIAD MONTAIGNE NO NEWSPAPERS That's sufficient

    — Nassim Taleb

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  5. Letters from a Stoic
    by Seneca

    Any bio of Seneca will be written by a library rat who writes biographies hence can’t get people of action. Just read Seneca. https://t.co/Q6Nc5ytshs

    — Nassim Taleb

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  6. Dominion
    by Tom Holland

    OK, OK, restarting w/some corrections. For comments. https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1544296263822213120 pic.twitter.com/US4P4JhU3T Tom Holland holds an edge over other current authors and intellectuals: the rare coupling of wide erudition and remarkable clarity of mind, two attributes that appear to be negatively correlated, as if the presence of one caused the other one to flee. This confers the ability to spot things other professionals don't catch immediately, in spite of sharing the same ensemble of information - what in my trading days we used to call "connecting the dots". And these discoveries, in spite of being hard to detect, appear obvious, even trivial after the fact. Holland is effortlessly ahead of his time: ten years ago, he was savagely attacked by the high priest of late Antiquity, the extremely decorated Glenn Bowersock, for his book on the conditions surrounding the birth of Islam. Then, only half a decade later, Bowersock quietly published a book making similar claims. So this entire book revolves around one simple, but far-reaching idea. By a mechanism dubbed the retrospective distortion, we look at history using the rear view mirror and flow values retroactively. So one would be naturally inclined to believe that the ancients, particularly the Greco-Romans, would seem like us, share the same wisdom, preferences, values, concerns, fears, hopes, and outlook, except, of course, without the iPhone, Twitter, and the Japanese automated toilet seat. But, no, no, not at all, Holland is saying. These ancients did not have the same values. In fact, Christianity did stand the entire ancient value system on its head. The Greco-Romans despised the feeble, the poor, the sick, the disabled; Christianity glorified the weak, the downtrodden, and the untouchable; and does that all the way to the top of the pecking order. While ancient gods could have their share of travails and difficulties, they remained in that special class of gods. But Jesus was the first ancient deity who suffered the punishment of the slave, the lowest ranking member of the human race. And the sect that succeeded him generalized such glorification of suffering: dying as an inferior is more magnificent than living as the mighty. The Romans were befuddled to see members of that sect use the cross - the punishment for slaves -as a symbol; it had to be some type of joke in their eyes. There is also the presence of skin in the game. Christianity, by insisting on the Trinity, managed to allow God to suffer like a human, and suffer the worst fate any human can suffer. Thanks to the complicated consubstantial relation between father and son, suffering was not a video game to the Lord but the real thing. The argument "I am superior to you because I suffer the consequences of my actions and you don't" applies within humans and in the relationship between humans and God. This extends, in Orthodox theology, to the idea that God by suffering as a human allowed humans to be equal to Him. Christianity had the last vindication when Julian The Apostate, falling for the retrospective distortion, decided to replace of the Church of Christianity by the Church of Paganism along similar organizational lines, with bishops and all the rest (what Chateaubriand called the "'Levites ). For Julian did not realize that paganism was a soup of decentralized individual or collective club-like affiliations to gods. What has been less obvious is that while we are inclined to believe that Christianity descends from Judaism, some of the reverse might be true. The mother-daughter relationship between Judaism and Christianity has been, as of late, convincingly challenged. "Without Paul, there would be no Akiva" claims the theologian Israel Yuval as we can see in Rabbinical Judaism the unmistakable footprints of Christianity. Further East, Shite Islam shares many features with Christianity, e.g. the same dodecadic approach, with twelve apostles, the last of whom will accompany Jesus Christ, plus self-flagellation rituals around the memory of martyrdom; these can be possibly attributed to a shared Levantine origin. But it is clear that the latest position of supreme leader has been guided by the Catholic hierarchy. Christianity has been slow to spread its values from text to execution, and that may be the point of this book. Yes, Christianity glorifies the poor: but it took seventeen centuries from "the eye of the needle" in Matthew 19:24 to the conception of communism. Likewise it took more than a millennia for the "neither slave nor free" in Galatians 3:28 from epistle to execution. As to the "neither Greek nor Jew", alas, we are still waiting for full implementation as we have witnessed with the birth of nationalism in the late 18th C., a moral degradation and a step away from universalism with the modern contraption of the nation state -the murderous nation state. I recall vividly the TV ads in the early 2000s, promoted by Democrats to attack George W. Bush's policies in Iraq; they kept showing the tragedy that 3,800 people died in the invasion. They omitted to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis -lest the Republicans question their patriotism. These foreign casualties do not seem to count because nationalism establishes clean balance sheets: countries are only responsible for their own citizens.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  7. The Dawn of Everything
    by David Graeber

    You muuuuuuuuuust read the next Graeber and @davidwengrow !

    — Nassim Taleb

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  8. The discovery of France
    by Graham Robb

    Until I discovered, reading Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France, a major fact that led me to see the place with completely new eyes and search the literature for a revision of the story of the country.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  9. Elements of information theory
    by T. M. Cover

    OK, OK, here are (some of) the books I enjoyed in 2019. pic.twitter.com/UqarbFAPJ6

    — Nassim Taleb

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  10. The Wealth of Nations
    by Adam Smith

    3- Current bibles: The Bible, Wealth of Nations, Das Kapital, Works by Aquinas, Montaigne, etc. They fail editorial criteria. Editors don't understand books, Academics don't get scholarship. Why?@rorysutherland : employees' objective is minimizing blame in case of failure.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  11. Conspiracy
    by Ryan Holiday

    Wonderful discussion w/@RyanHoliday. 1) Gawker was destroying lives (weak college girls) & others w/impunity exploiting 1st amndmnt & because law suits too embarassing for plaintifs. 2) An Op-Ed or tawk woudn't fix the problem. 3) @peterthiel destroyed Gawker by bullying bully https://t.co/jzCkOTZYWY

    — Nassim Taleb

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  12. Ficciones
    by Jorge Luis Borges

    Fictiones by Borges [is the best fiction book I've ever read].

    — Nassim Taleb

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  13. Chaos Kings
    by Scott Patterson

    Scott Patterson @pattersonscott and I are doing Part 2 Wednesday. Please post in the🧵any question you may have so far related to Part 1. -- A Discussion With Scott Patterson's About His Book Chaos Kings, Part 1 https://youtu.be/VuoCxJ9y8-0?si=1p0RyMNfphiC1JTf

    — Nassim Taleb

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  14. Bible
    by

    Reread --or read-- the Bible.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  15. Scale
    by Geoffrey West

    Have you seen Scale by West? Log scale, but humans are outliers. Exercise has a net effect of lowering the total beats, see @drjohnm's book.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  16. Intelligence
    by Stuart Ritchie

    My review of that book on "intelligence"https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R6SACJFYYTD40?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp https://twitter.com/QuietLion/status/1594378465503244288

    — Nassim Taleb

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  17. Napoleon The Great
    by Andrew Roberts

    Great book pic.twitter.com/2Q8np2J7n3

    — Nassim Taleb

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  18. A New Kind of Science
    by Stephen Wolfram

    Witness here how salaried physicists are dismissing @stephen_wolfram Wolfram's automata BEFORE even hearing him Just as Freeman Dyson publicly dismissed *A New Kind of Science* c. 2002; it turned out that he did not read the book. & pple who refused to read it referred to Dyson! https://t.co/8PfnQVG1k7

    — Nassim Taleb

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  19. Alchemy
    by Rory Sutherland

    4 hours dinner conversation with @rorysutherland and Rohan @Silva in a Pakistani restaurant in London (2 bottles of wine, but no Negroni). You must buy two copies of Rory's book, in case one is stolen, lost, damaged (by the rain), or self-destructs. pic.twitter.com/Xa5WFOGCNt

    — Nassim Taleb

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  20. Probability, random variables, and stochastic processes
    by Athanasios Papoulis

    I always always recommend the book by Anastassios Papoulis. 1) Never start with stats, start with probability. 2) Never read a stat textbook not written by a probabilist. Beware, there are plenty, plenty, plenty of stats books written by psychologists! https://t.co/tVYO73HLFB

    — Nassim Taleb

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  21. Das Kapital
    by Karl Marx

    3- Current bibles: The Bible, Wealth of Nations, Das Kapital, Works by Aquinas, Montaigne, etc. They fail editorial criteria. Editors don't understand books, Academics don't get scholarship. Why?@rorysutherland : employees' objective is minimizing blame in case of failure.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  22. Summa Theologica
    by Thomas Aquinas

    3- Current bibles: The Bible, Wealth of Nations, Das Kapital, Works by Aquinas, Montaigne, etc. They fail editorial criteria. Editors don't understand books, Academics don't get scholarship. Why?@rorysutherland : employees' objective is minimizing blame in case of failure.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  23. Seta
    by Alessandro Baricco

    Upload the cover of a book you love without saying why and mention the person who invited you (@mcapellanus) and invite 8 others for #WorldBookDay. @csandis @VergilDen @holland_tom @peterfrankopan @petelx60 @BrankoMilan @BellesLettresEd pic.twitter.com/kQKcFvlqJj

    — Nassim Taleb

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  24. The forge of christendom
    by Holland, Tom Dr.

    Also @holland_tom took real risks for his book, followed something to its logical conclusion.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  25. Modelling Extremal Events
    by Paul Embrechts

    Best exposition is the first 3 chapters of Embrecht's book.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  26. Un amore
    by Dino Buzzati

    Yes and I have also read Buzzati on how to find love in a bordello.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  27. The invisible gorilla
    by Christopher F. Chabris

    Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, in their book The Invisible Gorilla, show how people watching a video of a basketball game, when diverted with attention-absorbing details such as counting passes, can completely miss a gorilla stepping into the middle of the court.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  28. Happy Accidents
    by Morton A. Meyers

    Morton Meyers, a practicing doctor and researcher, writes in his wonderful Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs: “Over a twenty-year period of screening more than 144,000 plant extracts, representing about 15,000 species, not a single plant-based anticancer drug reached approved status. This failure stands in stark contrast to the discovery in the late 1950s of a major group of plant-derived cancer drugs, the Vinca Alcaloids—a discovery that came about by chance, not through directed research.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  29. The Tartar Steppe
    by Dino Buzzati

    As a child, I viewed the world into two types of people: those who read the deserto and were therefore marked by it, and the rest. Francois Mitterand, who was not my cup of tea, seduced me when on the literary panel Apostrophes he went on and on passionately talking about the book --"j'ai été marqué par ce livre", he said, his eyes gleaming

    — Nassim Taleb

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  30. The Blank Slate
    by Steven Pinker

    Note: I do not disrespect psychologists because I don't know their works. It is precisely BECAUSE I read their crap. Between 2002 and 2005½ I read >200 psychology books and took notes. (Here 3 books by Pinker @sapinker who claims I didn't read his junk) pic.twitter.com/EH1VNTZgU4

    — Nassim Taleb

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  31. The Millionaire Next Door
    by Thomas J. Stanley

    More Experts I recently read a bestseller called The Millionaire Next Door, an extremely misleading (but almost enjoyable) book by two “experts,” in which the authors try to infer some attributes that are common to rich people.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  32. Le Labyrinthe des égarés
    by Amin Maalouf

    An excellent book on modern historical dynamics, covering the stories of the rise of Japan, the Soviet Union, China, & the U.S. I learned tons lot of stuff. It reads like a novel. COI Disclosure: Maalouf did not ask me to comment. pic.twitter.com/JqOmJ1HubD t's the kind of book I didn't know I had to read.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  33. Quand la Chine s'éveillera… le monde tremblera
    by Alain Peyrefitte

    A prophetic book I just found in my parent's library, titled (tr.) When China Wakes Up... the World Will Shiver. 53 years ago, a French diplomat thought dynamically in a world lacking in clarity of mind. I read it as a child. Today, play the same exercise. pic.twitter.com/X8eQD2WqfP

    — Nassim Taleb

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  34. The Second Law
    by Stephen Wolfram

    It's w/some excitement that found of (personalized) copy of this book in my mailbox. If I hadn't known @stephen_wolfram v. well personally for 21 years, I would have thought that he was a committee of >12 researchers. Furthermore: 1) His output is accelerating w/time; 2) The… pic.twitter.com/ul5L18FoV4

    — Nassim Taleb

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  35. What Is ChatGPT Doing... and Why Does It Work?
    by Stephen Wolfram

    OK, OK, we found for #RWRI 18 the best possible person for the Q&A, the one who literally wrote the book on ChatGPT. pic.twitter.com/QpFuC6sJOr

    — Nassim Taleb

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  36. Toxic Exposure
    by Chadi Nabhan

    Monsanto, Roundup, and Nabhan's book "TOXIC EXPOSURE" with Nassim Nicholas... https://youtu.be/bAFxC5h6cEI via @YouTube

    — Nassim Taleb

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  37. The Haywire Heart
    by Christopher Case, John Mandrola, and Lennard Zinn

    Have you seen Scale by West? Log scale, but humans are outliers. Exercise has a net effect of lowering the total beats, see @drjohnm's book.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  38. Wanting
    by Luke Burgis

    Ordered the book.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  39. The Seventh Letter
    by Mihai Spariosu

    The posthumous novel by my late friend Mihai Spariosu, RIP. Saw the book's progression over the past 20 y. “Entertaining & gripping ...Plato, Socrates & the Academy/ Plato’s philosophy without abstraction, as the ideas are imbedded in the narrative.”https://www.amazon.com/dp/1737922819?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

    — Nassim Taleb

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  40. Corto Maltese
    by Hugo Pratt

    OK, OK, my reply to the recommended list of summer reads: 1) A practical (short) manual of Latin grammar. 2) Corto Maltese (complete collection, preferably the Ballad of the Salty Sea in text form) 3) Safe Haven by Spitznagel [it can also be read in the winter & other seasons] https://t.co/eDMryP4n03

    — Nassim Taleb

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  41. Anna Karenina
    by Leo Tolstoy

    Thanks, but I prefer to read Anna Karenina.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  42. Hurst The Heart
    by Valentin Fuster

    I made a mistake. I wrote that "nobody reads textbooks for pleasure". Well, I now do. 1) They look like old illuminated MS (unlike drab books), #Lindy. 2) Much, much more pleasureable to read physically than digitally (in spite of, or owing to, the weight: 2 vol = 24lbs). pic.twitter.com/qFHq71pRm7

    — Nassim Taleb

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  43. Harrison's principles of internal medicine. - 18. ed.
    by Anthony Fauci

    I made a mistake. I wrote that "nobody reads textbooks for pleasure". Well, I now do. 1) They look like old illuminated MS (unlike drab books), #Lindy. 2) Much, much more pleasureable to read physically than digitally (in spite of, or owing to, the weight: 2 vol = 24lbs). pic.twitter.com/qFHq71pRm7

    — Nassim Taleb

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  44. Socrates in Love
    by Armand D'Angour

    An advertisement for Maestro @ArmanddDAngour's book on Socrates/Diotima "Socrates in Love". Reading the section where he introduces Diotima while communicating with the [collaborative] author. https://t.co/E9U87vbuy1 pic.twitter.com/sC6jyCX8vZ

    — Nassim Taleb

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  45. Les sceptiques grecs
    by Victor Brochard

    Free on Google Books. Brochard: Les sceptiques grecs.

    — Nassim Taleb

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  46. Œuvre
    by Milan Kundera

    It took 5 weeks to get here from France... The complete works (The Czech was translated by Kundera). Now the question: where to start. Most of Kundera's books are hypnotic. This is literature. pic.twitter.com/Q9wwtH933O

    — Nassim Taleb

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  47. Decamerone
    by Giovanni Boccaccio

    My mind is on books I don't have yet, but did order. The Decameron in Italian/Spanish bilingual so I can improve both... Looking for more bilingual Italian/Greek/Spanish... pic.twitter.com/k098axJ6uO

    — Nassim Taleb

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  48. Memoirs of a Physician
    by Alexandre Dumas

    My mind is on books I don't have yet, but did order. The Decameron in Italian/Spanish bilingual so I can improve both... Looking for more bilingual Italian/Greek/Spanish... pic.twitter.com/k098axJ6uO

    — Nassim Taleb

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  49. Lévy statistics and laser cooling
    by François Bardou

    There is a book by Cohen-Tannouji and Bouchaud on the stable dist in plasma physics

    — Nassim Taleb

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  50. The Quick and the Dead
    by Pavel Tsatsouline

    I am reading this books by Pavel Tsatsouline. He advocates short exercises to avoid lactic acid, etc. The idea is to stop the sprint as soon as you stop accelerating. Wonder what Grant and Guru make of it. pic.twitter.com/5SBtkN8d3Y

    — Nassim Taleb

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