Previously published in the New Yorker.

Pt. 1: Obsessives, pioneers, and other varieties of minor genius -- The pitchman : Ron Popeil and the conquest of the American kitchen -- The ketchup conundrum : mustard now comes in dozens of different varieties--why has ketchup stayed the same? -- Blowing up : how Nassim Taleb turned the inevitability of disaster into an investment strategy. -- True colors : hair dye and the hidden history of postwar America -- John Rock's error : what the inventor of the birth control pill didn't know about women's health -- What the dog saw : Cesar Millan and the movements of mastery -- Pt. 2: Theories, predictions and diagnoses. Open secrets : Enron, intelligence and the perils of too much information -- Million dollar Murray : why problems like homelessness may be easier to solve than to manage -- The picture problem : mammography, air power, and the limits of looking -- Something borrowed : should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life? -- Connecting the dots : the paradoxes of intelligence reform -- The art of failure : why some people choke and others panic -- Blowup : who can be blamed for a disaster like the Challenger explosion? No one, and we'd better get used to it -- Pt. 3: Personality, character and intelligence. Late bloomers : why do we equate genius with precocity? -- Most likely to succeed : how do we hire when we can't tell who's right for the job? -- Dangerous minds : criminal profiling made easy -- The talent myth : are smart people overrated? -- The New-Boy Network : what do job interviews really tell us? -- Troublemakers : what pit bulls can teach us about crime.

Malcolm Gladwell asks the questions you never even thought to ask (and will change the way you think) about everything from criminal profiling to ketchup.