IStock Photo 8455006 © Antonprado

We are blessed by some of the most superb writers tackling the issues of probability, science, risk, prediction, and what can be learned about the future from our experience of the past. Significant scientists and researchers such as Stephen Hawking, E.O. Wilson, and Oliver Sacks have set wonderful standards of thoughtful, clear writing which takes us to information and considerations we might not otherwise encounter or grasp. Great science journalists or those dealing really with the history of ideas, such as James Gleick, Atul Gawande, and Malcolm Gladwell have shown that looking clearly at the world we are in can be more astonishing than science fiction. To help those who love Book of Odds or to help find gifts for those who do, we have suggested book gifts, some new and some older, but each remarkable in its own right.

Amram Shapiro, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwaanza, Diwali, and all the private holidays of the heart this season inspires, 2009

Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The self-styled Levantine “quant” with enough F-U money to do as he pleases, wrote cogently about the financial world’s denial of the inevitability of the Black Swan, the term he popularized for the unlikely event with outsize consequences. His favorite targets, bankers and investment scheme charlatans, so predictably courted the Black Swan he doesn’t regard the current banking meltdown as a true Black Swan. In the Talebian spirit, Book of Odds does not trust simplistic prediction and recognizes that uncertainty takes many hues and species, not just black and white and certainly not only swans. We also understand the uses and limits of induction. Taleb has brilliantly expounded on these matters and many more in books which attack “epistemic arrogance” and quote fascinating thinkers. Like many great teachers, his irascibility masks a willingness to share his search and doubts along with his strongly held views, all signs of intellectual courage in my book. Above all we recommend his work since his subject is one of the greatest subjects of all: understanding how to understand what may happen to us—and the limits of what we may understand, try as we will. Read him! He won’t bite!

Michael and Ellen Kaplan. Chances Are: Adventures in Probability. When you encounter a really well written and expansive survey of mankind’s wrestling match with the angel of randomness, you have a great book for Book of Odds readers. This one ranges over time and tells its historical tales vividly and subjects, with eleven titles in gerund form: From “Thinking” to “Gambling” to “Predicting” to “Being.” Even the epigraphs are first-rate. It has some math in it but it is very clearly explained, reminding me in some ways of one of my favorite books, the classic One Two Three. . .Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science, by George Gamow.

Malcolm Gladwell. What the Dog Saw, and anything else by this author. I love his mind and his method. Gladwell is a natural storyteller in the most classic sense: he has an ability to discover anecdotes which have a mythic quality and convey meanings in their narrative. His commentaries and theories simply make what is contained in the tale explicit. Like Ovid or Shakespeare he roams where he will and picks up the tales which reveal. The Tipping Point is an idea, most richly expressed in the anecdotes describing Lois Wiesberg. Blink is an idea, most richly expressed in the anecdotes of Thomas Hoving and Vic Braden. The moral is salutary, but the anecdote is better than its punch line when selected and told by a classical storyteller.

Tim Harford. The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor—and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car! If Malcolm Gladwell’s books draw wide-ranging conclusions from deeply considered anecdotes, The Undercover Economist is more like a course in the basic ideas of free market economics illustrated by well chosen anecdotes. Unyielding in its view that anything but the “world of truth” the markets reveal leads to false hopes and epic disasters, he cites Maoist China, North Korea, and Cameroon. The last is in the Afghanistan class with respect to government corruption. After explaining Ricardo using Starbucks®, he moves through many interesting topics such as health care in the UK, US, and Singapore, and a very clear account of how China engineered a gradual economic turnaround of unprecedented success, and why India, without the equivalent of Hong Kong and Taiwan, hasn’t reduced poverty as handily. Hartford has two engaging qualities. First, he recognizes that the models of economists often apply poorly to flesh-and-blood human beings and his stories of the failed application of game theory to disastrous public auctions are testimonies to how clever shenanigans can defeat purist modeling. Second, he cares about people and their dislocations and pains. He may regard a sweatshop as better than the alternative, but he doesn’t pretend it is therefore admirable.

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics was a revelatory book. It showed how hard-nosed collection and analysis of data can explode stereotypes and reveal wonders even in the most ordinary of questions. The argument that abortions led to reduction in crime was a brilliant piece of inductive work. It was also deeply disturbing to many. Opponents of abortion were challenged to accept the possibility it had made their country safer. Advocates of the rights of the poor were challenged to accept that having the exercise of an abortion right resulted in fewer living examples of their natural constituents. The first premise smacked of social conservative heresy. The latter smacked of racist eugenics. What better way to declare your bona fides as a thorough-going, fact-based skeptic than to discomfit almost everyone? In similar fashion the revelations of the miserable economics of the street-level crack industry contrasted the hard facts in the primitive bookkeeping of the street to the stereotype of the drug lord, dripping in ostentatious gold gewgaws. The book is a great read and goes a long way to promote the value of skepticism, careful data gathering, and the slow, hard word of inference. It isn’t contrarian so much as willing to be contrarian if that is where the chips fall. Super Freakonomics, the next volume in this franchise, has just been published to some critical reviews. If they are correct this book is not the equal of the first and tilts too far towards contrarianism for its own sake. If they are not correct one may suspect a backlash based on the view that University of Chicago economists should wait patiently for their Nobel and not court huge publishing advances.

Courtney Humphries. Superdove. Have you ever visited a foreign country and admired a local bird you did not recognize, only to discover that it was new to you but humdrum to the locals, in fact regarded as a kind of pest? In that moment before your innocent enjoyment is dashed you have looked at this ordinary creature the way Courtney Humphries regards the ubiquitous pigeon. She looked with fresh eyes at the urban pigeon and discovered such marvels as how Darwin derived ideas of natural selection from the unnatural selection of pigeon breeders and fanciers. At Book of Odds we admire her writing style, and she has contributed several pieces to our site. If you want to give a fresh and intelligent natural history book, I cannot recommend this one highly enough.