The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Incerto, #2)

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Once, on a transatlantic flight, I found myself upgraded to first class next to an expensively dressed, high-powered lady dripping with gold and jewelry who continuously ate nuts (low-carb diet, perhaps), insisted on drinking only Evian, all the while reading the European edition of The Wall Street Journal. She kept trying to start a conversation in broken French, since she saw me reading a book (in French) by the sociologist-philosopher Pierre Bourdieu—which, ironically, dealt with the marks of social distinction. I informed her (in English) that I was a limousine driver, proudly insisting that I only drove “very upper-end” cars. An icy silence lasted the whole flight, and, although I could feel the tension, it allowed me to read in peace.