The Hour Between Dog and Wolf

By John Coates

The Hour Between Dog and Wolf - John Coates
  • Release Date: 2012-06-14
  • Genre: Management & Leadership
Score: 4
4
From 30 Ratings

Description

Brilliant.” David Brooks, The New York Times

A profoundly unconventional book . . . So absorbing that I wound up reading it twice.” Bloomberg

Finalist for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year

What happens to your body when you take risks? What happens to it when you make or lose a lot of money? 

In this startling book, physiologist and former Wall Street trader John Coates vividly illustrates what happens to your body when you engage in risk taking. You transform into a different person, a change Coates refers to as "the hour between dog and wolf." He tells a gripping story of a group of traders caught in a bull market and then a crash. As the excitement builds he takes us inside the traders' bodies to see the biology of risk taking at work, a biology shared by athletes, politicians, soldiers - anyone who ventures beyond their safety zone.

Coates also discusses how men and women excel at different types of risk; how the stress of failure damages our health; and how we can train our bodies so that they help rather than hinder our risk taking. Revealing the biology behind bubbles and crashes, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf sheds new and surprising light on issues that affect us all.

Reviews

  • Fascinating ideas, and well written

    5
    By Specific Major Dude
    The Hour between Dog and Wolf is a fascinating -- and specific -- exploration of the science of how our biology drives risk-taking and risk-averse behavior. The science is complex, and this book does not lend itself to three-bullet talking points for the popular press, but it is well worth the intellectual effort to understand. The power of this book comes from the fact that the author has expertise in both Wall Street trading and the biological science, a combination that is at the least very rare and perhaps actually unique. How lucky we are that he is an excellent writer as well. Splendid.