AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'Masterly... Utterly compelling... A highly readable and engaging
tour' Sam Freedman The Times From the New York Times bestselling author of The Signal and
the Noise the definitive guide to our era of risk-and the players raising the stakes In the
bestselling The Signal and the Noise Nate Silver showed how forecasting would define the age
of Big Data. Now in this timely and riveting new book Silver investigates "The River " or
those whose mastery of risk allows them to shape-and dominate-so much of modern life. These
professional risk takers-poker players and hedge fund managers crypto true-believers and
blue-chip art collectors-can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the 21 st
century. By embedding within these worlds Silver offers insight into a range of issues that
affect us all from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI. The River has increasing
amounts of wealth and power in our society and understanding their mindset-including the flaws
in their thinking-is key to understanding what drives technology and the global economy today.
There are certain commonalities in this otherwise diverse group: high tolerance for risk
appreciation of uncertainty affinity for numbers skill at de-coupling self-reliance and a
distrust of the conventional wisdom. For the River complexity is baked in and the work is how
to navigate it without going beyond the pale. Taking us behind-the-scenes from casinos to
venture capital firms to meetings of the effective altruism movement On the Edge is a
deeply-reported all-access journey into a hidden world of powerbrokers and risk takers.
