Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk Book

I had started the book with very high expectations but unfortunately, I am disappointed for the most part.

I have to say that the title of the book is not totally compatible with the content. "Against The Gods" gives the impression that the book would illustrate how human beings overcame their superstitions and prejudices, and opposed blind faith. The book talks about how the development of mathematics and statistics provided human beings with ways of quantifying risks but it does not talk about conflicts between science and orthodoxy.

The book mentions the two events which ultimately led to the development of mathematics in the West. One is the introduction of the Hindu number system to the West by the Arabs and other is the Renaissance in Europe which paved the way for scientific thinking.

Then we are introduced to various mathematicians, philosophers, economists who developed various theories on probability, uncertainty etc. The author mostly discusses how these theories had a profound impact on business and sectors like finance, insurance and the stock market. Some of the anecdotes were really interesting but since a lot many of these people and their theories have been presented, at times I found it difficult to remember who had proposed what.


I liked certain anecdotes especially those which talked about how the theory of probability was developed based on games of chance, certain fun mathematics facts, eccentricity of certain people, use of financial instruments in the olden days. As a person who loved Algebra during his school days and still loves it, I liked the riddle regarding the age of Diophantus.

Bernstein has also talked about psychological experiments conducted to gauge human decision making and the theories thus developed. Towards the end, we also learn about risk hedging instruments such as derivatives - futures and options.

No doubt, Peter Bernstein has done extensive research for this book. Writing a book like this is by no means an easy task. I do appreciate how complex it is, but I did feel it could have been much better. So many theories were discussed but it was not clear exactly how they were applied.

This book is not for everybody. Only those people who have some idea or interest in the stock market and historical trivia might be interested in it. There might be other books on the same theme but which are far better.