BOOK REVIEW

David and Goliath– Malcolm Gladwell

Entertaining and eclectic, another Gladwell for the bookshelf

           The release of Malcolm Gladwell’s newest book was surrounded by much public interest and hype, mostly as the author took a four-year hiatus to research material for another typically thought-provoking read. Having read much of Gladwell in pieces before, this was actually the first of his books that I sat down to absorb from cover to cover. I use ‘absorb’ intentionally: Gladwell has a unique way of making his points in compelling fashion, intertwining them in stories about everyday people who are perfect demonstrations of his arguments. In this book he attempts to delineate why the discrepancy between normality and what we inherently perceive as unfavourable circumstances – such as dyslexia or losing a parent at a young age, for example – may not be as large a gap as we think. Indeed he claims that in some cases what society may deem a hindrance can actually help propel people to a greater level of success than they would otherwise have been able to achieve. Typically, he dismisses conventional thinking (at times in surprisingly blunt fashion, such as calling out particular academic institutions for not being as good as they claim) and encourages readers to challenge our innate programming of what we consider undesirable.

          His storytelling method of writing is hugely enjoyable in what is essentially a book on human behavior: his employment of real-life examples not only are more relatable and thus memorable as anecdotes, but make you want to look up his references out of curiosity. For example, I spent 20 minutes researching Gary Cohn after discovering that the Goldman Sachs chief is actually dyslexic. I spent even more time learning about the group of Impressionists in the 1860s who took the hyper-competitive culture of Parisian painting into their own hands. In this way you feel as though you are illuminated to much more about the world than just Gladwell’s message.

          However, as digestible a read as this was, I do have two criticisms without which my review would be very much incomplete. The first is that I found Gladwell to digress hugely in the last third of the book. One instance is his outline of the Irish civil movement roughly half a century ago – the link here to his thesis of rethinking the odds in a traditional David and Goliath scenario is much, much weaker and he even evades explicitly drawing the connection. I found the final three chapters to be of this vein and felt aggrieved at the poor explanation as to their relevance.

         Finally, I do consider Gladwell a public intellectual and an immensely smart man to have us challenge our thinking so often; however, I now understand why he’s been accused in the past of 'picking and choosing’ his stories and data to fit his claims rather than vice versa. Therein lies my second critique. Although he does an admirable job of referencing all his research, some of his data points and arguments are presented in such a way that he comes off as being selective of the information or his choice of wording. To end this review as he ends his book – making reference to the legal system – I’m not sure whether Gladwell could be convicted of casuistry but he could certainly be charged of it and a strong case made against him too. 

-NP, Dec. 2014

Note: A friend recently sent me a podcast on which Gladwell was interviewed as he was promoting David & Goliath. The interview offers an expository discussion on the topic of underdogs, and dives deeper into concepts such as the inverse U-curve and relative deprivation. For anyone interested in reliving the book or considering reading it, this podcast is worth a listen.