Despite its off-putting title, this is a serious and genuinely useful guide to a specific area of value investing that most retail investors ignore: special situations. Greenblatt defines special situations as corporate events — spinoffs, restructurings, mergers, rights offerings, bankruptcies, and recapitalizations — that create temporary mispricings because they generate shares or securities that end up in the hands of investors who did not choose to own them and who sell them indiscriminately, regardless of underlying value. Greenblatt argues, backed by academic research and his own fund's track record, that spinoffs in particular are a systematically fertile hunting ground because the newly independent companies are typically too small, too unfamiliar, or too unglamorous for institutional investors, creating the kind of neglect and irrational selling that generates genuine bargains. The book walks through the mechanics of each special situation type with specific examples, explaining how to find relevant securities, what financial documents to read, what to look for, and how to size positions appropriately. Written with Greenblatt's characteristic clarity and self-deprecating humor, it opens up a segment of the market that generates unusually attractive returns precisely because it requires more effort than standard stock screening and therefore faces less competition from other investors.