Rare decays and direct CP violation in the B system: probing deeper into the Standard Model

The $B$-factory experiments Belle and BaBar have been running for several years and have accumulated very large samples of reconstructed $B$ decays. From this data a wealth of measurements have been made of branching fractions, polarization, and $CP$ asymmetries. Some results are as theoretically expected, while others are surprising. In this talk I review recent measurements relating to rare hadronic decays, including searches for direct $CP$ violation, and discuss what these measurements tell us about the Standard Model and any new physics.