Read Black Swan, by NNT.
His thesis is that the most significant impacts on an individual and/or a collective are the function of outliers or "Black Swans". In a Malcolm Gladwell kind of way, he uses a bunch of anecdata to prove his thesis. It's a pretty good book I suppose, but it was also before the all the faux-philosophy Malcolm Gladwell type books became a thing.
>I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.
What exactly do you mean by that? In all sincerity, I think you misused an idiom or at least didn't make a clear connection as to why you chose that one.
> In a Malcolm Gladwell kind of way, he uses a bunch of anecdata to prove his thesis.
In my opinion this is perhaps the best 1 line description of his work in general. I think there are some interesting ideas which are worth discussing, but sometimes his attitude and use of "anecdata" tires me out.
I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.