Silver investigates "the River," the community of like-minded people whose mastery of risk allows them to shape—and dominate-—so much of modern life. These professional risk-takers—poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true believers and blue-chip art collectors—can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the twenty-first century. By immersing himself in the worlds of Doyle Brunson, Peter Thiel, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sam Altman, and many others, Silver offers insight into a range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI.
Engaging and entertaining ... In his quest to understand people who are obsessed with risk, Silver draws on a wide range of insights ... Ultimately presents an unsympathetic vision of capitalism’s future.
Silver compellingly theorizes that humans are in general too risk averse, and that those who can discerningly fight that impulse often benefit greatly in life ... Given his knowledge of and affinity for poker, Silver tends to belabor that lens through which he looks — perhaps to a fault. Those uninterested in stats or strategies may have a hard time getting through this book. But if you don’t mind or are intrigued by the game, Silver eventually broadens his cohort.
In its prolix and flibbertigibbet way, this smart guy’s book now swerves to large gambling-adjacent matters ... The book is an exercise in self-justification, but what it fails to justify is the assumption that mathematics can in some way predict the course of human affairs ... Politics is not, in the end, just a game of cards.
