商品の説明

How the idea of risk propelled the process of science and enterprise into the modern world "It is said that no one can beat the odds. That may be true, but Peter Bernstein can make you understand what it means to take risks, financial and otherwise. No one else could have written a book of such central importance with so much charm and excitement."––Robert Heilbroner, author of The Worldly Philosophers In a narrative that reads like a novel, Against the Gods tells the story of a group of famous scientists and ingenious amateurs who actually discovered the notion of risk--of scientifically linking the present to the future. Like Prometheus, these pioneers equipped humanity with a set of tools that would spark the achievements of the modern world. People constantly make choices, arrive at decisions, and take risks. Savers buy stocks, doctors perform operations, poker players figure the odds, spaceships soar into the skies, and business managers launch new products. Without the instruments of risk management, such decisions would be impossible, because no one could figure the likelihood of successful outcomes. Indeed, the idea that human beings need not look to the heavens or listen to soothsayers for advice is less than five hundred years old. Hence, without the modern techniques of risk management, most of these decisions would be inconceivable: no bridges would span our widest rivers, our great corporate enterprises would never have come into being, no lives would be saved by coronary bypasses, space travel would be a dream, and no one would play poker. Against the Gods blends biography with history and science to show how famous thinkers like Pascal, Bernoulli, Bayes, Keynes Markowitz, Arrow and von Neumann paved the way from superstition to the super computer. But Bernstein tells of others as well: men who were less known but equally important in developing the theory and practice of risk management, including a few inveterate gamblers, two ministers, an anonymous group of monks, a doctor, a button salesman, and a composer of operas. The book explains such concepts as probability, uncertainty, the distinction between chance and skill, the interactions between gambling and investing, and rational versus irrational decision-making. PETER L. BERNSTEIN (New York, New York) is the author of the bestselling Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street and the editor of The Portable MBA in Investment (Wiley). He is the president of Peter L. Bernstein, Inc., an economic consulting firm for institutional advisors and corporations. "Against the Gods is an extraordinarily entertaining and informative book." --Wall Street Journal. "Nothing like Against the Gods will come out of the financial world this year or ever. I speak carefully: no one should miss it." --John Kenneth Galbraith Professor of Economics Emeritus, Harvard University. "An extraordinarily entertaining and informative book."--The Wall Street Journal. "No one else could have written a book of such central importance with so much charm and excitement."--Robert Heilbroner, author, The Worldly Philosophers. "Peter Bernstein leads us effortlessly through the history of risk because he writes so beautifully. This is a book on a left brain subject that will have right brain readers lining up for more!" --Robert Ferguson, Managing Director, Bankers Trust Australia Limited. "This looks like a new investment classic to me." --Barton M. Biggs, Chairman, Morgan Stanley Asset Management, Inc. Peter Bernstein's bestselling Against the Gods provides a fascinating analysis of risk which draws upon history and biography to trace the development of its concepts. Winner of the Booz Allen Business Book Award for 1997. *A BusinessWeek bestseller Peter Bernstein (New York, NY) is President of Peter L. Bernstein, Inc., established in 1973 to provide economic consulting to institutional advisors and corporations. He is also the author of the bestselling Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street and publishes a bimonthly analysis of the capital markets and the real economy called "Economics and Portfolio Strategy."

商品の詳細

• Amazon.co.jp ランキング: #7418 / 本
• 発売日: 2001-08
• 版型: 文庫
• 317 ページ

出版社/著者からの内容紹介
人類は神々に逆らってリスクの謎に挑み、やがて科学やビジネスのあり方を一変させた！　賭博師からノーベル賞学者まで、歴史上の天才・異才たちが繰り広げるリスク探求の物語を壮大なスケールで描いたベストセラー。

内容（「BOOK」データベースより）
古代ギリシャから筆を起こし、パチョーリ、パスカルらのパズル解明、確率論の発見、ルネッサンス・宗教改革による思想の自由化、保険の仕組みの考案など、数千年におよぶリスク探求の営みがここに蘇る!全米の知識人・書評子に絶賛された現代人必読の名著。

内容（「MARC」データベースより）
古代ギリシャの人々の思考様式、パチョーリ・パスカルらのパズル解明、ルネッサンス・宗教改革による思考の自由化、保険の仕組みの考案など、「リスク」の謎に挑み、未来を変えようとした天才たちのドラマを紹介。

カスタマーレビュー

統計学の参考書としても有効
わかりやすいし、面白い。

統計学の発展史として私は読みました。投資に限定するのはもったいないと思います。
統計学の教科書としても、最高レベルだと思います。

リスク概念についての考察には必読の一冊
リスク概念についての発生論から啓蒙主義を経て確率・統計によりリスク・マネージメントに対する手法発見などの歴史を詳述しています。対数の法則とか正規分布などはもとより確率論って意外と新しい概念なんですね。原題である｢Against the Gods｣の通り、やはり神による運命論から呪縛はいかに強大だったかが窺い知れます。
残念なのは上下の区切りが中途半端な点。文庫本化に際して上下巻を頁数的に均一にしようとしたのでしょうが、どうせ上巻の方が売上大きいのだろうし、ちょっとは値段高くしてもいいから、｢1700-1900年 限りなき計測｣をきっちり上巻に収めて欲しかったです。

（上）は統計学の本(下）はリスクマネジメントの本
　表題の「リスク」はどちらかといえば概念・総論を表す言葉であり、（上）では、その
歴史について、まずは統計学的なところから紐解いている。
　ただ、（下）まですべて読み終えないと「リスク」全般にかかる総論までは、たどりつかない。
　（下）の終盤で著者が述べているリスクマネジメントの未来の話は大変興味深い。