Against the Gods : the remarkable story of risk

Human existence is based upon risk. This text charts the adventures of a group of thinkers who embarked on a voyage of intellectual discovery, transforming primeval superstition into the powerful tools of risk control employed today.One of the foremost financial writers of his generation, Peter Bernstein has the unique ability to synthesize intellectual history and economics with the theory and practice of investment management With the stock market breaking records almost daily, leaving longtime market analysts shaking their heads and revising their forecasts, a study of the concept of risk seems quite timely. Peter Bernstein has written a comprehensive history of man's efforts to understand risk and probability, beginning with early gamblers in ancient Greece, continuing through the 17th-century French mathematicians Pascal and Fermat and up to modern chaos theory. Along the way he dem