Mandelbrot is a scholar and career maverick. He is best known for discovering fractal geometry. Since the 1960s, he has promoted alternatives to the standard Brownian motion, efficient markets model of modern finance. He has been influential in a fringe sort of way, but his ideas have never gained mainstream traction. This book is part autobiography and part advertisement for Pareto stable distributions and fractal analysis directed to an unsophisticated (retail) investor audience. It is messianic, overblown and a fun read ...