Recommendation: The Remarkable Story of Risk by P. Bernstein

I recently 2/3 finished reading a book named Against the Gods: The Remarkable story of risk by Peter L. Bernstein. The story is actually really interesting, with it mostly being a history book about risk. It is actually, I believe, the first history book about risk to be documented listing down how risk actually evolved from its roots all the way back to Greek times.

The Greeks actually had advanced themselves in Mathematics by quite abit. But, however, their advancement was limited to geometry. The book tries to answer the question why, if there is a reason, did the Greeks did not advance probability theory. It has to do with their way of living and their religious views, that prevented them from thinking that things did not occur entirely by chance or by their gods. Time passed on, and pass the Greeks, many philosophers contributed to the finding of probability theory. There are at least 50 different characters who made their mark on history mentioned in this book.

By the way, the book also won various awards, mostly by risk management associations. Modern risk as we know it is mostly applied to portfolio risk management. However, the author continues to tell that risk is still a child compared to the physical sciences who are already like adults. It is interesting to read about the story of risk.

What have I gathered from this book? I have learnt much about how did risk come about, its measurement, the evolvement of techniques, what can risk be used for and where it is applied, why do people still take insurance or gamble when they know it is a losing bet(theory of utility) and much much more. Great book and I certainly recommend it to my readers. It also covers a few material on the sharemarket and about risk of investing.

Credit to the Intelligent Investor corporation for recommending to me this book.