Prologue Summary and Analysis

Summary

The author used a prologue to give an overview of his ideas presented in the rest of the book. He called events that are entirely unanticipated Black Swans, a reference to the black swans of Australia. Up until the Seventeenth Century, people of other countries had accepted the hard fact that all swans were white, but when the flocks of black Australian swans were first spotted by a Dutch mariner, a long-held belief was refuted.

Black Swans have happened throughout history, the author observed. From the 9/11 attack to the Persian Empire being conquered by a young upstart from Macedonia, Black Swans had the characteristic of turning the world on its head, changing perceptions and beliefs in radical ways. The author proposed that our habits of thinking, developed over thousands of years, have not been capable of dealing with Black Swans...