Want to know what chaos theory can teach us about human events? In the perspective-altering tradition of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan comes a provocative challenge to how we think our world works—and why small, chance events can divert our lives and change everything, by social scientist and Atlantic writer Brian Klaas. If you could rewind your life to the very beginning and then press play, would everything turn out the same? Or could making an accidental phone call or missing an exit off the highway change not just your life, but history itself? And would you remain blind to the radically different possible world you unknowingly left behind? In Fluke, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas dives deeply into the phenomenon of random chance and the chaos it can sow, taking aim at most people’s neat and tidy storybook version of reality. The book’s argument is that we willfully ignore a bewildering but for a few small changes, our lives—and our societies—could be radically different. Offering an entirely new lens, Fluke explores how our world really works, driven by strange interactions and apparently random events. How did one couple’s vacation cause 100,000 people to die? Does our decision to hit the snooze button in the morning radically alter the trajectory of our lives? And has the evolution of humans been inevitable, or are we simply the product of a series of freak accidents? Drawing on social science, chaos theory, history, evolutionary biology, and philosophy, Klaas provides a brilliantly fresh look at why things happen—all while providing mind-bending lessons on how we can live smarter, be happier, and lead more fulfilling lives.

Some of topics covered in book:
• Laplace’s demon
• Evolution; adaptive and maladaptive change
• Schemas; heuristics
• Swarms; locusts
• Complicated vs. Complex systems
• Emergence
• Cascades
• The brain as a prediction machine; probability theory
• Quantum theory; entanglement
• Mankind's inborn narrative shaping of information; narrative bias.
• Path dependency
• The Great Man theory
• Darwin; evolution.
• How timing, down to the split second, produces world-changing impacts
• "The Garden of Forking Paths"
• Why rocket science is easier than understanding human society
• Are our lives scripted from the start, or do we have the freedom to choose our futures?
• Free Will. "You can decide to drink water, but do you choose to want to drink water in the first place?."
• The upside of uncertainty in our chaotic, intertwined world

Klass aims of the book:
1. Does everything happen for a reason, or does stuff… just happen?
2. Why do tiny changes sometimes produce huge impacts?
3. Why do we cling to a storybook version of reality even if it’s not true?
4. Can’t we just tame flukes with better data and more sophisticated probability models?
5. Where do flukes come from—and why do they blindside us?
6. Can we live better, happier lives if we embrace the chaos of our world?