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Antifragile: Things That Gain from DisorderAntifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision making in a world we don't understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how
Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don't understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls "antifragile" is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile, Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Furthermore, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call "efficient" not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before even starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. And throughout, in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear. Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb's message is revolutionary: The antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it. Praise for Antifragile "Ambitious and thought-provoking . . . highly entertaining."--The Economist "A bold book explaining how and why we should embrace uncertainty, randomness, and error . . . It may just change our lives."--NewsweekBinding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House
Published: 11/27/2012
ISBN: 9781400067824
Pages: 519
Weight: 1.91lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.40w x 1.30d
Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 10/15/2012
Booklist 11/15/2012 pg. 3
Library Journal 01/01/2013 pg. 97
New York Review of Books 01/10/2013 pg. 16
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2013
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4.5 ★★★★★
Based on 2004 reviews
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
Great Historical Reading
Format: Paperback
I found "American Slavery, American Freedom" to be a thought-provoking book that contained a great deal of useful information. I wrote in the margins of the book, took notes, and highlighted entire pages.
"American Slavery, American Freedom" was well-written and enjoyable to read.
I had read countless books on slavery over the years. This book did not focus primarily on slavery. A detailed description of the steps and events that led to the creation of the Commonwealth of Virginia can be found in "American Slavery, American Freedom."
The history of Virginia is characterized by slavery and servitude. Since many of the books I had read on slavery lacked a compelling backstory, I found this book refreshing.
As far as I can tell, the author denied or downplayed the fact that Thomas Jefferson fathered many children with a slave named Sally Hemmings. The author probably worked on this book for years before its publication in 1975. There was a possibility that Edmund Morgan did not want to write about any "touchy" topics.
"American Slavery, American Freedom" was a pleasure to read. I would recommend it to others.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2020
★★★★★ 4
Disturbing Questions
"Racism became an essential, if unacknowledged, ingredient of the republican ideology that enabled Virginians to lead the nation." writes Edmund S. Morgan in 1975, and ends this book with the rhetorical question: "Is America still colonial Virginia writ large?"
These are deeply disturbing questions - questions one is compelled to ponder as one reads this lucid and dispassionate presentation of the how primitive accumulation in Virginia at the beginning of the 17th century was replaced a century later by an orderly and opulent society based on slavery. The answer to such questions is not made easy by the realisation that the only other successful republican experiment - the Athenian democracy - blossomed too on a bed of slavery.
Do these questions matter today? Have we not moved on from racism? I'm afraid not. Again the voice of Morgan: "In the republican way of thinking, zeal for liberty and equality could go hand in hand with contempt for the poor and plans for enslaving them." Sounds eerily familiar? Just as today's language used to describe terrorist threats is redolent of the rhetoric that once surrounded the lynching of black bodies. Racism (albeit globalised) is re-visiting the land today, and so are republican virtues and values.
The book is long, and in some ways, too detailed. Morgan delights in the telling particular, and at times one wishes he would not linger on some specifics. But this has a purpose. He wants to show the imperceptible and surreptitious mechanisms by which a society acquires its ugly and immoral traits until they become so natural as to be invisible. Step by step, event by event, law by law a construction emerges that would have horrified its founders. Yet, at the time, it seamed the logical, and the right thing to do.
A strong point in Morgan's narrative is the links he highlights between the developments in Virginia and the Britain's commercial interests, migration policies, population growth and control, state revenue, and political history or thought. One can better appreciate the import of Virginia for Britain and the mother country's fixation and fascination for the North American colonies.
Brash and brutal, Virginian slavery stood openly as godmother at the foundation of the American Republic. Other aspects of slavery also contributed significantly - but as they were indirect, they remained veiled and are hardly recognised even today. New England benefited greatly from its cod trade to the Caribbean, where the product that was found to be unfit for European markets was fed to the slaves, thus freeing up land that otherwise would have been used to sustain them. When will we get a total picture of slavery's import for America's economic foundations?
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Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2003
★★★★★ 5
how a country could develop a "national character" founded on the love of liberty while simultaneously importing thousands and t
Format: Paperback
This book lays out hte paradox, how a country could develop a "national character" founded on the love of liberty while simultaneously importing thousands and thousands of bondsmen to provided the "free people" with the necessities of life: i.e., why slavery was necessary to support the kind of freedom the white folk wanted to become accustomed to.... and implicitly, why the industrial revolution finally changed the hearts and minds of enough Americans to make slavery seem unnecessary and therefore, if was no longer a necessary evil, why it had to be overthrown.
Morgan writes objectively -- but his feelings are always detectable through his writing style, which is perhaps the best academic English to be found anywhere. I found it gripping. The book was published in 1972, and has doubtless been corrected by many subsequent researchers in some of its particulars -- but it was the fountainhead for a new way of understanding American history that young people all have learned about in high school, but which many baby-boomers have never seriously encountered.
Reading it accomplished a MAJOR retrofit in my sense of how the USA got to be the way it is today. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Tea Party and many trump supporters seem to adhere to the values of the original American Republicans [and to think that Black folk should be pushed back to a place where their feelings don't matter], and to long for a return to the status quo ante -- with ante referring to a time long LONG ago
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Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2016
★★★★★ 5
U.S. American Genesis
Format: Kindle
Kindle edition worked well. Very interesting and insightful read by a first rate historian. Tells the story of how our ancestors transitioned from Englishmen to Americans. A book well worth taking the time to read.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2022
★★★★★ 5
History at its best
This comprehensive history of early Virginia persuasively argues that slavery and racism contributed to the American notions of freedom and democracy for those not enslaved. Although first published in 1975, one would never guess that just from reading it. Morgan's argument emerges from such a careful reading and analysis of primary sources that it remains as important today as it was a quarter century ago. The book also provides valuable insights into many subjects other than slavery, including economic and political relations between Virginia and England, early interactions with Native Americans, and changing colonial and British notions of labor and class. Highly recommended on any of these issues.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2007