I have read Black Swan and recommend it.
I read a very negative review of Antifragile recently - the reviewer felt it was very self-regarding, boastful and somewhat wandering. I "get" the anti-fragile design sustainability argument - let me know what you get out of it, I would value another opinion.
Not surprised a reviewer would say that, it isn't untrue exactly, but I don't think it was any more self regarding, boastful, or wandering than the Black Swan was, I'm not bothered by his arrogance--it has merit! He's been correct when a lot of others were wrong, and he's made millions doing it. With no other context that reviewer sounds insecure and seems to have missed the point. I do know he's offended many intellectuals. These books are written in a interesting style to me--where a genius is basically taking his time to lay out his ideas in a digestible form for the rest of us--and along the way he name drops, uses obscure sources, makes fun of people, and calls them names. Note that the guy is fluent in English, French, classical Arabic, Italian, Spanish, can read in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, ancient Hebrew, and Canaanite script!
Taleb's wiki page has some good references to his critics and his responses.
Practically speaking I can't come up with very specific, practical ideas to apply though I hope to take more notes now that I'm financially "awakened". In a general sense I think his writings contribute to the intuition I cultivate regarding risk, probability, and critical thinking of other's ideas. An astute Mustachian could probably develop some investment tactics where you would capitalize on highly improbable events, as Taleb himself has done.
One of the central ideas is one which I think members here probably get intuitively--that prediction and forecasting events is pretty much useless. We see rare but impactful events, but because the sample size of unlikely events is small, their properties and effects are mathmatically unknowable.
Another idea is that seemingly stable, homogenous systems (like a financial system dominated by a few large institutions) don't reduce risk, but they make is harder to measure, and when they do break down, the effects are far worse and widespread than say, a financial system with many smaller institutions (where more, smaller failures occur, and those failures serve to make the whole system better: antifragile).
Consider how this applies to say, GMO foods--would you rather have an agriculture system dominated by very few nutritious, resistant cultivars, or by many varieties with many different characteristics?
