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-noy network : What do job interviews really tell us? -- Troublemakers : What pit bulls can teach us about crime.