Ivar Ekeland spends a lot of time talking about Norwegian legendary kings and their peccadillos, but I guess that must be because he is Norwegian. Anyhoo, this book is about Chance, Fate, Anticipation, Chaos, Risk and Statistics. In fact, coincidentally, those are the chapters of the book too. Basically, the premise is that we either can't do anything about anything, or obversely we may be able to do so, but for the myriad of variables that greet us each day as we lazily stretch, arise and brush our teeth. Any of those actions, delayed or bumped up by a nano-second and we could find ourselves run over by the UPS truck or bitten on the nose by those damn possums. So best not to worry, or consider the butterfly flapping its wings somewhere and assume that things will turn out the way that they do because he is such a rascally little thing. Bottom line is ignore the formulas in the book. I did. Otherwise it is amusing, erudite and thought provoking. Exponential instability is the heart of the matter. That's what I always thought, I think.