Antifragile by Nassim Taleb: review Antifragile resembles a self-help book, though it is difficult to imagine any other self-help book as intemperate and cranky. The author is a tireless self-aggrandiser, boasting of his gargantuan reading habits; of being a weightlifter, ready to physically slap down detractors; and a gourmand, recommending fine wines and camomile tea to ease a troubled mind. In truth, no amount of camomile could ease Taleb's rage. However, the anger is narrowly focused. He passionately hates academic economists (especially Nobel laureates) and bankers, blaming them for making an already fragile world far more breakable. He argues that anyone who profits from recommending financial models has a vested interest in sticking by these tools long after they have proven useless. Using the language of his option trading days, he claims they take the upside and escape the downside by ensuring failure never affects them. They are untouchable because they have "no skin in the game." He is beyond apoplectic when he reflects that there was no moral hazard for the bankers who caused the current world crash. He recommends beheading on the pavement outside the cash machine. Taleb came up with the term "antifragile" because he believes no other word conjures up a state of mind that absorbs shocks and uses the experience as a springboard to growth. By way of illustration, Taleb points to the mythological Hydra who thrives in times of turbulence by sprouting two new heads each time one is cut off. Other examples include weightlifters, Mafiosi, Lebanese villagers, entrepreneurs, bon vivants, street fighters, artists and, of course, Nassim Nicholas Taleb. A cynic might suggest many terms cover Taleb's notion, including "machismo," "virility" or "brio." As he lists "soccer moms" as a particularly horrible example of fragility, we might add "not-mumsy." However, beneath the braggadocio, Taleb's suggestions are markedly risk-averse. If top-down solutions tend to exaggerate shocks then, Taleb argues, we need to develop more devolved, small-scale strategies and diversify our portfolios. Though he hates experts without a stake in the outcome, Taleb recommends we merely dip a toe into any new experience, so we more easily shrug off mistakes. The itty-bit-of-skin strategy may work for a wealthy international flâneur but sounds less useful for subsistence farmers or refugees in camps. Taleb is ostensibly a follower of two conservative heroes, F A Hayek and Karl Popper, yet his background in the money markets and his focus on its disasters begs comparison with Left-wing thinkers. For instance, Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine (2007) also argues that economic theorists exacerbate disasters, though Klein believes this is a deliberate policy rather than rank stupidity. Antifragile, a more philosophical work than Taleb's earlier books, shares much with the Marxist philosophers Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek. Like them, Taleb holds that unexpected events lie outside any possible epistemology. And, like them, he hopes by a piece of cheeky negative dialectics to turn this failure into the basis of a new all-encompassing philosophy. Badiou and Taleb share an enthusiasm for grounding their ideas with mathematical terms while remaining, at heart, romantics. The greatest example of antifragility, we learn, is nature, which in Taleb's view is an ever-regenerating life force: unfalsifiable, ungraspable and utterly out-there. Antifragile has annoyed fans of Taleb's earlier works because, in turning away from statistics, his thought has become baggier, bombastic and often preposterous. Nevertheless, his work exerts a strange pull. Taleb's aim is both quixotic and ambitious: he wants to overleap the limits of epistemology and return to the founding drama of Ancient Greek philosophy. Taleb is incisive when he writes about the original Greek philosophers and their medieval Arab followers. Plato's Republic begins with an attack on merchants and money lenders collectively known as krematistes: the moneymakers. Plato is the perfect example of a top-down, authoritarian state-planner and his attack on the riff-raff in trade is a decisive moment in philosophy. Taleb re-energises the debate by taking the moneymaker's part. In his heart, he remains a barrow-boy challenging the philosopher kings in the same way that, as an options trader, he once took on the academic economists. His story is similar to many other members of the statistics revolution. The inventor of Moneyball, Bill James, wrote his original analyses while working night shifts at a pork cannery. Nate Silver funded his blogs by playing online poker. Taleb is an outsider in a business of outsiders, and if he is lobbing grenades at the power in the centre - well that's the point. Antifragile: How to Live in a World We Don't Understand by Nassim Taleb 472pp, Allen Lane, t £23 (PLUS £1.35 p&p) Buy now from Telegraph Books (RRP £25, ebook £25)