PETER L. BERNSTEIN is President of Peter L. Bernstein, Inc., economic consultants to institutional advisors and corporations. His semimonthly analysis of the capital markets and the real economy, Economics and Portfolio Strategy, is read by managers and owners of investments totaling over one trillion dollars. Mr. Bernstein is the author of many articles in the professional and popular press, as well as six books in economics and finance, including the bestselling Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street. He is the coeditor of Investment Management (Wiley), and was the first editor of The Journal of Portfolio Management.
This is an unexpected gem. Did you know that Edmund Halley, of comet fame, was the first person to draw up workable actuarial tables of mortality? Or that Charles Darwin's cousin invented the science of fingerprinting? Chapters with headings such as 'The man who counted everything except calories' suck you in to a divertingly gossipy account of the lives of great statisticians (for want of a better word) from the ancient Greeks to the modern stock market. A highly original and entertaining mixture of biography, history and science that should not be missed. (Kirkus UK)