> Skip to content
  • Published: 27 February 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241247488
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

Skin in the Game

Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life




"A great iconoclast. . . Taleb, a Wall Street trader turned essayist, is a thinker touched by genius" Matthew Syed, author of Black Box Thinking

Why should we never listen to people who explain rather than do? Why do companies go bust? How is it that we have more slaves today than in Roman times? Why does imposing democracy on other countries never work?

The answer: too many people running the world don't have skin in the game. In this provocative book, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows that skin in the game applies to all aspects of our lives. It's about having something to lose and taking a risk. Citizens, lab experimenters, artisans, political activists and hedge fund traders all have skin in the game. Policy wonks, corporate executives, theoreticians, bankers and most journalists don't.

In his inimitable, pugnacious style, Taleb creates a jaw-dropping framework for understanding this idea. Skin in the Game challenges our long-held beliefs about risk, reward, politics, religion and finance - and makes us rethink everything we thought we knew.

  • Published: 27 February 2018
  • ISBN: 9780241247488
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

About the author

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has devoted his life to immersing himself in problems of luck, uncertainty, probability and knowledge. Part literary essayist, part empiricist, part no-nonsense mathematical trader, he is currently Dean's Professor in the Science of Uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His last book, the bestseller Fooled by Randomness, has been published in eighteen languages and was selected by Fortune magazine as one of "The Smartest Books of All Time". Taleb lives mostly in New York.

Also by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

See all