This “captivating illustration of the follies of trying to model and forecast the unpredictable world” (Financial Times) is both “empowering” (The New Statesman, UK) and “compelling” (New Scientist) as it challenges our most fundamental assumptions—by social scientist and Atlantic writer Brian Klaas, whom Prospect magazine has named one of the world’s “Top 25 Thinkers.”
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?
In Fluke, myth-shattering social scientist Brian Klaas takes a deep-dive into the phenomenon of random chance and the chaos it can sow, taking aim at most people’s neat and tidy version of reality. The book’s argument is that we willfully ignore a bewildering truth: 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.
Amazon Best Book of the Year So Far 2024
Waterstones Best Book of 2024
“Provides a captivating illustration of the follies of trying to model and forecast the unpredictable world we inhabit [and also] entertainingly reminds us that modern society is a complex adaptive system…Fascinating.”
—Financial Times
“Fluke is full of examples of mind-boggling randomness…There’s something empowering about feeling every moment of your life could change the world.”
—The New Statesman
“Fluke is provocative and compelling, bringing the complex relationship between order and chaos vividly alive. There is every chance you will love it.”
—New Scientist
“Klaas poses the question, ‘If you could rewind your life to the very beginning and then press play, would everything turn out the same?’….He finds his answers in a multi-disciplinary survey of political science, philosophy, economics, evolutionary biology, geology and more, synthesizing and juxtaposing winningly…Fluke is engagingly written and Klaas has a nice way of broadening out anecdotes to make wider points….Some of these stories are quite gripping.”
—The Arts Desk
