Avoid being a sucker this new year

If there is one book you need to help figure out how and why those unexpected large scale events happened in 2008, try reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan.

And if you insist you are smart, this book might just make you smarter. If you think that you are dumb, this book will also make good company (revealing that dumbness is actually quite democratic, just like luck).

If you loved the egotistical, idiosyncratic and angst-ridden rants against flawed contemporary thinking in Taleb's Fooled By Randomness, chances are The Black Swan might be what you are looking for. Or it could also be too much of a good thing (some can't stand his ego).

Read it to avoid becoming the fool this new year and taken for a ride by the establishment. According to Taleb, these so called "experts" have all along been residing in the media (talking heads) and in government (politicians). And they will in all likelihood be contributing to the misshapened perception of the world's unpredictability.