Getting Rich and Banking on "Randomness"

I find it more than a bit ironic that in this post earthquake age of the "new," "open," "mature" and very 21st century Chinese government there is absolute domestic silence here on anything historical (e.g. 19 years ago today).But who am I to buck the system?!  I have self preservation online as a priority too.So here's a completely benign book review.  I've not had time recently to do full book reviews on some of books I've finished but here are two highlights.First, Duncan Hewitt's "Getting Rich First, Life in a Changing China." This is a modern storybook. Nothing revelatory or really specific to doing business--but a lot of great stories about real people.The thing I like about reading books like this is that it helps to humanize the staggering list of statistics that is usually presented as "China." It also has Shenzhen on the back cover, I I think that Shenzhen gets bypassed too often with people running from Hong Kong to Dongguan. As with any personal story or even any statistic, the snapshots in the book tend to simplify the enormity of the China experience and the diversity of available stories--but Hewitt does his darndest to get as many stories as he can in--the book is almost 500 (large) pages. If you're just reading business books and newspapers about China this is a refreshing break from the numbers. The stories are interesting and unique and will add some soul to lines of workers you see in factories.The other book I've just finished is Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "Fooled by Randomness."  This book is very different than just about anything that I've read before.  Set mostly in the context of trading is a very thought provoking deconstruction of systems in favor of randomness.  Instead of random events being something to throw out because they skew the average, these events should be considered stongly if not counted on to certainly happen.  The results being: "it does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear."He is very anti media and "experts" going so far as saying "What sounds intelligent in a conversation or a meeting, or, particularly, in the media, is suspicious."  On risk managers he is even less kind.He takes on statistics, Darwinism (survival of the fittest) and it's social science offshoots, learning from history and ultimately the "market"--it's not only not always right, it's positively dead wrong.This is one of those books that I need to read two or three times to being to comprehend and apply.  He has a website too.