Making mistakes, especially when dealing with abstractions, is easy and common. In the software world, one saying is "There are no non-trivial programs without bugs." Another one goes "Testing can show the presence of bugs but never their absence." Most of us have heard of Murphy's law. I'm surprised that things tend to work as well as they do and at how confident we can be that we got things right. This book can be seen as a kind of sober celebration of this state of affairs along with some attempts to theorize about how mistakes can better be prevented by looking at how they occurred. What's more, it's often funny.

A personal note: There is one section that the author suggests you skip over if you happen to be on an airplane. I didn't do so even though I was waiting to board a plane to Amsterdam at the time. I reasoned that giving in to fear at this point could only make matters scarier. I (and the flight) were fine.