The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms, By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Fallibility highlighted in this smug tract

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the zeitgeisty, banker-bashing bestseller The Black Swan, returns here with a collection of aphorisms that revolve around what Taleb calls the "general theme of my work...the limitations of human knowledge".

I find it strange that a book that purports to deal with human fallibility displays such a lack of humility. Taleb sees himself as a maverick railing against modern idiocy. Many of his maxims turn on an opposition between "I" and an amorphous "they". ("What they call literature I call journalism, what they call journalism I call gossip".) His tone is so insufferably self-satisfied that you end up siding with those he scorns.