Book: Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, Peter L. Bernstein

Okay, I'll fess up - when I reached for this book off my uncle's shelf I did actually think it was about religion. I think that's reasonable considering the title and front cover, but I guess if I was really paying attention then the subtitle would have told me all I needed to know - that I was reading a book about risk, something I directly deal with on a day to day basis at work. Urgh.

Still, it turned out that it wasn't that bad a read despite that. Instead of focusing on the technical, Bernstein look sat the history and philosophy behind risk, chance and decision making, including all the human and subjective input into the age old field. As such this was more of a book about economics than technical maths, although that's probably not entirely correct either considering how the constant battle between the economists and mathematicians was brought up during the read.

But still as non technical and well written the book is, I did find it labouring a little toward the end. I think that was to be expected given the half-reference-half-prose style of it, but nevertheless I suppose that means this is a book more for those in search of specific information or answers rather than something to read randomly.