Download or read book The Black Swan written by Mercedes Lackey and published by Astra Publishing House. This book was released on 2000-05-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After his wife's untimely death, a powerful sorcerer dedicates his life to seeking revenge against all womankind. He turns his captives into beautiful swans--who briefly regain human form by the fleeting light of the moon. Only Odette, noblest of the enchanted flock, has the courage to confront her captor. But can she gain the allies she needs to free herself and the other swan-maidens from their magical slavery?A monumental tale of loyalty and betrayal, of magic good and evil, of love both carnal and pure, and of the duality of human nature, The Black Swan is a rich tapestry which is sure to become an all-time masterpiece of fantasy.
Download or read book The Blank Swan written by Elie Ayache and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-05-17 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: October 19th 1987 was a day of huge change for the global finance industry. On this day the stock market crashed, the Nobel Prize winning Black-Scholes formula failed and volatility smiles were born, and on this day Elie Ayache began his career, on the trading floor of the French Futures and Options Exchange. Experts everywhere sought to find a model for this event, and ways to simulate it in order to avoid a recurrence in the future, but the one thing that struck Elie that day was the belief that what actually happened on 19th October 1987 is simply non reproducible outside 19th October 1987 - you cannot reduce it to a chain of causes and effects, or even to a random generator, that can then be reproduced or represented in a theoretical framework. The Blank Swan is Elie's highly original treatise on the financial markets presenting a totally revolutionary rethinking of derivative pricing and technology. It is not a diatribe against Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan, but criticises the whole background or framework of predictable and unpredictable events white and black swans alike , i.e. the very category of prediction. In this revolutionary book, Elie redefines the components of the technology needed to price and trade derivatives. Most importantly, and drawing on a long tradition of philosophy of the event from Henri Bergson to Gilles Deleuze, to Alain Badiou, and on a recent brand of philosophy of contingency, embodied by the speculative materialism of Quentin Meillassoux, Elie redefines the market itself against the common perceptions of orthodox financial theory, general equilibrium theory and the sociology of finance. This book will change the way that we think about derivatives and approach the market. If anything, derivatives should be renamed contingent claims, where contingency is now absolute and no longer derivative, and the market is just its medium. The book also establishes the missing link between quantitative modelling (no longer dependent on probability theory but on a novel brand of mathematics which Elie calls the mathematics of price) and the reality of the market.
Download or read book Incerto 4 Book Bundle written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 1253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series is an investigation of luck, uncertainty, probability, opacity, human error, risk, disorder, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand, in nonoverlapping and standalone books. All four volumes—Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and the expanded edition of The Bed of Procrustes, updated with more than 50 percent new material—are now together in one ebook bundle. ANTIFRAGILE “Startling . . . richly crammed with insights, stories, fine phrases and intriguing asides.”—The Wall Street Journal Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from 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. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. What is crucial is that the antifragile loves errors, as it incurs small harm and large benefits from them. Spanning politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine in an interdisciplinary and erudite style, Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. THE BLACK SWAN “[A book] that altered modern thinking.”—The Times (London) A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random and more predictable. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. In this groundbreaking and prophetic book, Taleb shows that black swan events underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives, and yet we—especially the experts—are blind to them. FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS “[Fooled by Randomness] is to conventional Wall Street wisdom approximately what Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses were to the Catholic Church.”—Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? Fooled by Randomness is about luck: more precisely, about how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill—the markets—Fooled by Randomness is an irreverent, eye-opening, and endlessly entertaining exploration of one of the least understood forces in our lives. THE BED OF PROCRUSTES “Taleb’s crystalline nuggets of thought stand alone like esoteric poems.”—Financial Times This collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses Taleb’s major ideas in ways you least expect. The Bed of Procrustes takes 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. With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical views of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness.
Download or read book The Black Swan written by Raphael Sabatini and published by House of Stratus. This book was released on 2014-11-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Priscilla Harradine travels back to England on the Centaur she has no cause to expect her journey will be remotely eventful. But also on board is Charles de Bernis – a mysterious and intriguing buccaneer. Just as their friendship blossoms, a dark figure from de Bernis’ past emerges to propel them into a thrilling and perilous adventure.
Download or read book The Black Swan of Paris written by Karen Robards and published by MIRA. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exquisite WWII novel illuminating the strength of three women in occupied Paris, for fans of The Nightingale, The Alice Network and The Lost Girls of Paris. "A truly outstanding novel...reminds us of the power of love, hope and courage."—Heather Morris, #1 bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz Paris, 1944 Celebrated singer Genevieve Dumont is both a star and a smokescreen. An unwilling darling of the Nazis, the chanteuse’s position of privilege allows her to go undetected as an ally to the resistance. When her estranged mother, Lillian de Rocheford, is captured by Nazis, Genevieve knows it won’t be long before the Gestapo succeeds in torturing information out of Lillian that will derail the upcoming allied invasion. The resistance movement is tasked with silencing her by any means necessary—including assassination. But Genevieve refuses to let her mother become yet one more victim of the war. Reuniting with her long-lost sister, she must find a way to navigate the perilous cross-currents of Occupied France undetected—and in time to save Lillian’s life. In this heart-wrenching novel, bestselling author Karen Robards showcases the extraordinary lengths one goes to save their family from a German prison. A web of spies, the resistance and a vivid portrayal of Paris in wartime.
Download or read book Black Swan written by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2002-11-15 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2001 Cave Canem PrizeSelected by Marilyn NelsonFinalist, 2003 Paterson Poetry Prize"Imagine Leda black—" begins Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon's exciting new collection of poems. Mixing vernacular language with classical mythology, modern struggles with Biblical trials, she gives voice to silenced women past and present.In Van Clief-Stefanon's powerful voice, last night's angry words "puffed / into the dark room like steam / punching through the thick surface / of cooking grits." She remembers a child's innocence "lost / in the house where I learned the red rug / against my chest, my knees / my tongue, . . . ." Black Swan is filled with pain, loss, hope, and the promise of salvation.
Download or read book The Black Swan written by Philippa Carr and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVThe riveting Cornwall saga continues with the story of Lucie Lansdon, the sole witness to a horrifying crime much too close to home . . . /divDIV After her father is murdered, Lucie Lansdon’s eyewitness testimony sends a fanatical Irish terrorist to the gallows. Fate claims another victim when Lucie receives news that her fiancé has died in Africa. Reeling from the deaths of the two men she loved most, and convinced that her life is cursed, Lucie finally finds happiness when she marries the gentle Roland Fitzgerald./divDIV /divDIVBut her domestic life with Roland and his sister is not all it should be. Someone is watching—and waiting to carry out a cunningly orchestrated plan of retribution. As Lucie’s life is threatened and she begins to doubt her sanity, she’s visited by someone she believed lost to her forever. On the verge of uncovering the truth about a long-ago night, she places her trust in the wrong person./div
Download or read book White Swan Black Swan written by Adrienne Sharp and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2008-12-18 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world's most famous choreographer becomes infatuated with a coltish young dancer who proves both siren and muse. A rising star plunges into an affair with a principal but finds that ecstasy on the stage can't be surpassed in the bed. A dying legend reflects on the evanescent beauty of a life of gesture, lost to everything but memory. Each bittersweet story plants the reader amid a cast of dancers and choreographers who struggle—valiantly, playfully, fiercely—to find in the rigorous discipline and animating beauty of ballet a counterbalance to the chaos of unscripted life. Many of the tales dare to imagine the inner lives of the century's titans—Balanchine, Fonteyn and Nureyev—which rival in emotional complexity and pathos the classic dramas they enacted onstage: La Bayadere, Don Quixote, Swan Lake. White Swan, Black Swan translates the pure and essential gestures of ballet into starkly elegant prose while showing the sweat and sex beneath the serene surface. Adrienne Sharp's debut is a bravura performance.
Download or read book Stalking the Black Swan written by Kenneth A. Posner and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-31 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kenneth A. Posner spent close to two decades as a Wall Street analyst, tracking the so-called "specialty finance" sector, which included controversial companies such as Countrywide, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, CIT, and MasterCard many of which were caught in the subprime mortgage and capital markets crisis of 2007. While extreme volatility is nothing new in finance, the recent downturn caught many off guard, indicating that the traditional approach to decision making had let them down. Introducing a new framework for handling and evaluating extreme risk, Posner draws on years of experience to show how decision makers can best cope with the "Black Swans" of our time. Posner's shrewd assessment combines the classic fundamental research approach of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd with more recent developments in cognitive science, computational theory, and quantitative finance. He outlines a probabilistic approach to decision making that involves forecasting across a range of scenarios, and he explains how to balance confidence, react accurately to fast-breaking information, overcome information overload, zero in on the critical issues, penetrate the information asymmetry shielding corporate executives, and integrate the power of human intuition with sophisticated analytics. Emphasizing the computational resources we already have at our disposal our computers and our minds Posner offers a new track to decision making for analysts, investors, traders, corporate executives, risk managers, regulators, policymakers, journalists, and anyone who faces a world of extreme volatility.
Download or read book The Black Swan written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the author's point of view, a black swan is an improbable event with three principal characteristics - It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don't know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the 'impossible'.
Download or read book Murder on Black Swan Lane written by Andrea Penrose and published by Kensington Books. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Regency London, an unconventional scientist and a fearless female artist team up to trap a cold-hearted killer: “Thoroughly enjoyable” (Deanna Raybourn, New York Times–bestselling author). The Earl of Wrexford possesses a brilliant scientific mind, but boredom and pride lead him to reckless behavior. So when pompous, pious Reverend Josiah Holworthy publicly condemns him for debauchery, Wrexford unsheathes his rapier-sharp wit and strikes back. As their war of words escalates, London’s most popular satirical cartoonist, A.J. Quill, skewers them both. But then the clergyman is found slain in a church—his face burned by chemicals, his throat slashed ear to ear—and Wrexford finds himself the chief suspect. An artist in her own right, Charlotte Sloane has secretly slipped into the persona of her late husband, using his nom de plume, A.J. Quill. When Wrexford discovers her true identity, she fears it will be her undoing. But he has a proposal—use her sources to unveil the clergyman’s clandestine involvement in questionable scientific practices, and unmask the real murderer. Soon Lord Wrexford and the mysterious Mrs. Sloane plunge into a dangerous shadow world hidden among London’s intellectual enclaves to trap a cunning adversary—before they fall victim to the next experiment in villainy . . . “Sharp, engaging characters, rich period detail, and a compellingly twisty plot, Andrea Penrose delivers a winner.” —Deanna Raybourn, New York Times–bestselling author “Fans of C.S. Harris take note! A riveting ride through Regency London, from the slums of St. Giles, to the mansions of Mayfair.” —Lauren Willig, New York Times–bestselling author “Historical chemistry meets alchemy . . . A delight of a book.&rdquo
Download or read book Black Swan Green written by David Mitchell and published by Random House. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews | A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist | Winner of the ALA Alex Award | Finalist for the Costa Novel Award From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons. Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s subtlest and most effective achievement to date. Praise for Black Swan Green “[David Mitchell has created] one of the most endearing, smart, and funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel. . . . The always fresh and brilliant writing will carry readers back to their own childhoods. . . . This enchanting novel makes us remember exactly what it was like.”—The Boston Globe “[David Mitchell is a] prodigiously daring and imaginative young writer. . . . As in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville, one feels the roof of the narrative lifted off and oneself in thrall.”—Time
Download or read book Flight of the Black Swan written by Marilyn M. Barnewall and published by Outskirts Press. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Financial Fraud, Global Elitists, IntrigueIn this sequel to In what some readers call docu-fiction, the economic terrorism currently suffered by the American populace is illuminated. Once again, Barnewall gently and skillfully weaves threads of belief, love, commitment, and patriotism throughout the dark webs of deceit.
Download or read book Black Swans written by Eve Babitz and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2018-04-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Babitz’s talent for the brilliant line, honed to a point, never interferes with her feel for languid pleasures." —The New York Times Book Review A new reissue of Babitz’s collection of nine stories that look back on the 1980s and early 1990s—decades of dreams, drink, and glimpses of a changing world. Black Swans further celebrates the phenomenon of Eve Babitz, cementing her reputation as the voice of a generation. With an introduction by Stephanie Danler, bestselling author of Sweetbitter. "On the page, Babitz is pure pleasure—a perpetual–motion machine of no–stakes elation and champagne fizz." —The New Yorker
Download or read book Black Swan White Crow written by J. Patrick Lewis and published by Aladdin. This book was released on 2007-08-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Step into the freedom of nature with this collection of nineteen haiku written by J. Patrick Lewis and the vibrant woodcuts by Christopher Manson accompanying each poem. Escape the pages of this book into the magic of the outdoors through the haiku and woodcut illustrations that fill the pages of Black Swan/White Crow. With themes of nature and the outdoors in each poem, young readers will feel as if they are watching bison during winter storms, crows resting on a phone wire, and grizzly bears fishing in a stream with their own eyes.
Download or read book Incerto written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House Trade. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 1873 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The landmark five-book series--all together in one boxed set The Incerto is an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision making when we don't understand the world, expressed in the form of a personal essay with autobiographical sections, stories, parables, and philosophical, historical, and scientific discussions, in non-overlapping volumes that can be accessed in any order. The main thread is that while there is inordinate uncertainty about what is going on, there is great certainty as to what one should do about it. This boxed set includes: FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS THE BLACK SWAN THE BED OF PROCRUSTES ANTIFRAGILE SKIN IN THE GAME
Download or read book The Black Swan written by Anne Batterson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-10-05 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set against a spontaneous cross-country road trip following the migrating birds, this passionate, lyrical memoir is one woman's reflections on midlife, her important personal relationships, her kaleidoscopic past, and her uncertain future. To fifty-six-year-old Anne Batterson, a woman whose life has been filled with adventure -- as a commercial pilot, an international skydiving champion, a trekking guide in Nepal -- her husband's decision to retire felt like a death sentence. Yearning for some way to reconcile herself to the future that was rapidly unfolding before her, she packed up her VW camper and hit the road with maps, bird guides, and little else except the desire to follow the fall migration and the bone-deep hunch that birds had something important to teach her. In this beautifully written narrative of that extraordinary trip, Batterson writes movingly not only about her experiences with the birds but also about the people she loves, has lost, and connects with along the way. Events from the present trigger vivid stories from the past. In the chapter "The Journey Within the Journey," a long, lonely night in a deserted campground in Virginia conjures up the ghosts of a desperate solo road trip she made when she was twenty-one. A towering cumulus cloud in Illinois brings back a breathtaking free fall into a similar cloud in "My Time as a Bird." An encounter with a great blue heron summons a compelling account of her mother's last afternoon in the world. "Bears in the Woods" describes a run-in with two Deliverance-type men in West Virginia, which brings back the murder of a dear friend in the woods of Connecticut. By the end of the journey, the ghosts of the past, like the author herself, have become part of a more fluid, more spiritual reality -- wild and spare and elegant and timeless -- one that is always out there, "quickening on the far side of reality." A unique mix of memoir and nature writing, The Black Swan is a charming story of a woman's odyssey.
