The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms [Hardcover]

The Bed of Procrustesis 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 areFooled by Randomness, The Black Swan,andAntifragile.

By the author of the modern classicThe Black Swan, this collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses his major ideas in ways you least expect.

The Bed of Procrustestakes its title from Greek mythology: the story of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. It represents Taleb’s view of modern civilization’s hubristic side effects—modifying humans to satisfy technology, blaming reality for not fitting economic models, inventing diseases to sell drugs, defining intelligence as what can be tested in a classroom, and convincing people that employment is not slavery.

Playful and irreverent, these aphorisms will surprise you by exposing self-delusions you have been living with but never recognized.

With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical values of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness.

“Taleb’s crystalline nuggets of thought stand alone like esoteric poems.”—Financial TimesPraise for Nassim Nicholas Taleb
 
“The most prophetic voice of all.” —GQ
 
“The hottest thinker in the world.” —Bryan Appleyard,The Sunday Times(London)
 
“[Taleb writes] in a style that owes as much to Stephen Colbert as it does to Michel de Montaigne.” —The Wall Street Journal
 
“Idiosyncratically brilliant.&rdquolsš