Overview

How the very things we create to protect ourselves, like money market funds or anti-lock brakes, end up being the biggest threats to our safety and wellbeing. We have learned a staggering amount about human nature and disaster -- yet we keep having car crashes, floods, and financial crises. Partly this is because the success we have at making life safer enables us to take bigger risks. As our cities, transport systems, and financial markets become more interconnected and complex, so does the potential for catastrophe. How do we stay safe? Should we? What if our attempts are exposing us even more to the very risks we are avoiding? Would acceptance of danger make us more secure? Is there such a thing as foolproof? In Foolproof, Greg Ip presents a macro theory of human nature and disaster that explains how we can keep ourselves safe in our increasingly dangerous world.

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9780316286046

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Reviews

[An] eye-opening book about risk-taking and crisis.... A provocative challenge to the tendency to elevate ideology over thoughtfulness. Kirkus Reviews

Drawing on a fascinating range of stories about forest fires and flood control, football helmets and anti-lock brakes, bank runs and epidemics, Foolproof is about the unintended and often very surprising consequences of our attempts to protect ourselves from disasters. Illuminating and entertaining, this book will change the way you think about the world of risk. Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

Praise for Foolproof: In this incisive and richly reported book, Greg Ip forces us to rethink our assumptions about risk. He shows that progress might depend on less safety, not more -- and that stability can often be destabilizing. FOOLPROOF is the rare book you'll be thinking about long after you've turned the final page. Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and To Sell Is Human

It has been said that the problem with making things idiot-proof is that someone will just build a better idiot. Greg Ip's new book shows us just how that happens, from anti-lock brakes to the gold standard, to the financial crisis we are still reckoning with today. Deftly written and filled with lucid explanations of complex topics, this is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand why seemingly safe territory so often turns out to be dangerous quicksand. Megan McArdle, author of The Up Side of Down

Author Information

Greg Ip is an award-winning journalist and the Wall Street Journal's Chief Economics Commentator. He's spent two decades in financial and economic journalism, including eleven years at the Wall Street Journal and six years at The Economist. He appears frequently on television and radio, including National Public Radio, PBS, MSNBC, and CNBC. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

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