Nassim Nicholas Taleb Black Swan and Other Great Books

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the author of several excellent and thought provoking books about how we generally incorrectly perceive risk in life and in financial systems. His recent and probably most famous book "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" was published before the current financial mess fully came to public awareness and in many ways predicted a lot of the problems in the financial system.

Here is a quote from his web-site: "My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves & the quality of their knowledge too seriously & those who don't have the courage to sometimes say: I don't know...." (You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment & make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race).