Nassim Nicholas Taleb, autore del tautologico Cigno Nero (un libro di economia, statistica, filosofia e storia del mondo che diventa un bestseller mondiale è un tipico cigno nero), grazie ai tempi che corrono si guadagna una pagina intera dell’Observer sotto il titolo “Il nuovo guru di Wall Street”, e un richiamo in copertina.

On Friday afternoon, Nassim Nicholas Taleb could be found on the veranda of a hotel bar in Louisville, Kentucky, knocking back bourbon in the warm afternoon sunlight. No wonder the Lebanese-born trader turned author feels like relaxing: his book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, has become a huge success. A book of economics and philosophy, it’s found a vast audience, speaks to its time and has become something of a key text to help understand the crisis in market capitalism.
Not only does the book sit high in the US bestseller lists, but as a mark of its impact, the term ‘black swan’ has joined ‘tipping point’ and ‘long tail’ by having a life of its own. The financial meltdown is now routinely referred to as a ‘black swan event’. As influential financial website bloomberg.comnoted earlier this month: ‘One hears folks from New York to Ulaanbaatar buzzing about black swans.’