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Best books I read in 2011:

* "Salonica, City of Ghosts" by M.Mazower. Tells the history of Thessaloniki, informative, entertaining, at times nostalgic.

* "The Cauchy-Schwarz Master Class" by J.M.Steele. A guided tour of mathematical inequalities. Very entertaining and readable (for a math book) and extremely well written.

* "Indiscrete Thoughts" by G-C.Rota. Irreverent anecdotes about mathematicians.

* "Black Swan" by N.N.Taleb. Maybe overhyped and at times annoying and pompous, but extremely insightful nevertheless.



Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness are both great reads from N.N. Taleb. Imho both are must reads.


I'm reading Fooled by Randomness and really like it. The Black Swan I couldn't finish because it kind of rambled. Not sure if he had a better editor for Fooled by Randomness or what.


Fooled by randomness seemed to me a little bit less rambling as well and a little bit more straight to the point. But I liked the more essayistic style of Black Swan as well (well, I studied literature, so i think I am just used to these kinds of writing).


"Salonica, City of Ghosts" is definitely an excellent read. I thought it was somewhat sad how the world wars of the 20th century diminished one of Europe's great, culturally rich cities.




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