Synopses & Reviews
NAMED A MOST-ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024 BY FT, The Guardian, and The Sunday Times
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Signal and the Noise, the definitive guide to our era of risk--and the players raising the stakes
In the bestselling
The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver showed how forecasting
would define the age of Big Data. Now, in this timely and riveting new
book, Silver investigates "The River," or those whose mastery of risk
allows them to shape--and dominate--so much of modern life.
These professional risk takers--poker players and hedge fund
managers, crypto true-believers and blue-chip art collectors--can teach
us much about navigating the uncertainty of the 21st century. By
embedding within the worlds of Doyle Brunson, Peter Thiel, Sam
Bankman-Fried, Sam Altman, and many others, Silver offers insight into a
range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to
the future of AI.
The River has increasing amounts of wealth and power in our
society, and understanding their mindset--including the flaws in their
thinking--is key to understanding what drives technology and the global
economy today. There are certain commonalities in this otherwise diverse
group: high tolerance for risk; appreciation of uncertainty; affinity
for numbers; skill at de-coupling; self-reliance and a distrust of the
conventional wisdom. For the River, complexity is baked in, and the work
is how to navigate it, without going beyond the pale.
Taking us behind-the-scenes from casinos to venture capital firms
to the FTX inner sanctum to meetings of the effective altruism
movement,
On the Edge is a deeply-reported, all-access journey into a hidden world of powerbrokers and risk takers.