NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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.” —
Newsweek
