David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (New York: Little, Brown and Company; 2013), 305 pages.

The Malcolm Gladwell publishing enterprise’s latest installment is David and Goliath. The format is similar to his previous efforts: a volume of essays with a theme. This volume is about what happens when ordinary people are confronted by giants. By giants, he means powerful opponents of all kinds from armies and mighty warriors to physical and intellectual disability, misfortune, and oppression. Each chapter tells the story of a person that faced an oversized challenge and was forced to choose to respond. Each person Gladwell covers was challenged to play by the rules or give up, strike back, or forgive. In exploring these stories, Gladwell tries to explore two ideas. First, he explores the idea that lopsided conflicts, like that between David and Goliath, produce greatness and beauty. Second, he believes that we consistently get these kinds of David and Goliath conflicts wrong. To Gladwell, we misread them or misinterpret them. The same qualities that give one side great strength and an overwhelming advantage are often sources of great weakness. Being an underdog can change people in ways that we often fail to appreciate: it can open doors, create opportunities, educate and enlighten, and make possible what might otherwise have seemed un-thinkable.

Gladwell uses examples to make his case. For example, he examines a sporting team with a novice coach and novice players that achieve amazing success against more experienced opponents by using unorthodox tactics. Gladwell examines school class sizes and student family wealth to show the positive relationship between wealth up to a certain point, after which there is a negative relationship between wealth and success. Parents of college-age children will find the chapter of college achievement very interesting. Gladwell explored research into success rates of students interested in science in non-prestigious colleges versus achievement of similar children at prestigious colleges. Gladwell reported that on average, it is better to be a big fish (bright kid) in a small pond (non-prestigious college) than it is to be a small fish in a large pond (a bright kid among very many bright kids at a large prestigious college). Gladwell also examined research into the productivity of faculty that graduated from non-prestigious colleges versus faculty that graduated from prestigious colleges and found that the faculty that graduated from less prestigious colleges were more productive (on average) than graduates of prestigious schools. Gladwell also examines how people that face great difficulties and sufferings often develop great skills and accomplishments in spite of these difficulties. The book contains three chapters on the limits to power, namely, how great power can act to sew the seeds of its own defeat, or result in tan expensive and fruitless use of power by the State.

While very readable, and at time quite engaging, Gladwell’s latest book lacks the gravity, punch or impact of his earlier works. It’s adequately entertaining enough for this reader to finish it, but only just. This is a book I looked forward to finishing: it started well, but faded badly. It starts well with what you would expect in a book with this title, but after the first third, starts to fade to the extent that it is not readily apparent how the final third fits the author’s purpose. Perhaps this is due to our interest in stories about David’s success, rather than Goliath-type failures. No book is perfect. Galdwell has written a book worth reading with brief moments of great insight, but overall, somewhat disappointing compared to his other works.

Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell, (New York: Little, Brown and Company; 2008), 309 pages.

Outliers is an explanation of why statistically different or statistically significant observations and results occur, in particular, super or exceptional successes. Gladwell identified some common features of successful people:

• They have about 10,000 hours of practice or experience in their chosen field that raised their skills so that they would be universally recognized as being at the top of their field.

• The successful are not the brightest or most gifted, but are those who were given opportunities, took them, and practiced (and practiced, and practice some more).

• The successful were placed in close proximity to, or in, an environment conducive to success.

Gladwell illustrates his points through case studies. Soccer and Canadian ice hockey players have a better chance at becoming all-stars if they are born in January. The Beatle’s success was, in part, due to their time working in Hamburg where they played music for at least 10 hours per day. Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, said his success had a lot to do with being born in the 1950’s and having almost unlimited free after-hours to a university’s programmable computer, and later the gift of a computer terminal while in junior high school. Attorney Joe Flom was born at a time when people from his background were excluded by the establishment law firms from practicing commercial law. He practiced the kind of law that establishment firms tended to avoid and after 20 years dominated his field of takeover law. Conversely, Korean Air turned around its poor safety record (i.e. a polite way of saying too many crashes) by giving its pilots the opportunity to escape its cultural legacy which included subservience and deference.

This book’s strength is the case studies on what it takes to be a success. These are what make the book worth reading. None of Gladwell’s work is new or earth-shattering. While at times long winded (I found myself skimming paragraphs, and later sections and chapters), Outliers is, overall, an entertaining selection of case studies. Look at other books if you are seeking specific help on how to change your life: this book does not provide specific or personal advice. It provides great case studies on success and the common features that contribute to attaining success: commitment, opportunity, and proximity to an environment conducive to success. If we remember these things, it’s probably worth laboring through the 309 pages.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell, (New York: Back Bay Books / Little, Brown & Company;  2000),  301 pages.

Gladwell best summarizes this book in the introduction.

"The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and the idea is very simple. It is that the best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or for that matter, the transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth, or any number of mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.”

Gladwell uses examples to convince us of the validity of his theory. Key to his argument is his 3-part explanation of how viruses or epidemics spread: the Law of the Few; the Stickiness Factor; and the Power of Context. The Law of the Few is that epidemics/viruses are driven by a handful of exceptional people who find about the “new thing/trend” and through energy, enthusiasm, and personality spread the word. They are like apostles or missionaries who have heard The Good News and enthusiastically win converts.

The Stickiness Factor is what makes a message memorable – think a slogan, jingle or image. The Power of Context says that people are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they may seem. These 3 laws apparently explain how various  changes occurred: how Hush Puppies became cool, and the fall in New York crime rates.

The Tipping Point presents a fairly convincing argument for Gladwell’s theories. He supports his theories with appropriate facts and does his best to convince his reader. While entertaining, for a while, I wonder whether Gladwell is trying to apply theoretical and scientific methods to things best explained through commonsense. Do we need laws and rules to explain how things spread? Do we need to give pseudo-scientific names to commonsense and ordinary things? This giving complex names to simple things is all pervasive: what used to be called soap is now a “cleaning system,” a simple fence is now called a “fencing system.” Gladwell’s explanation of how things changed is very enjoyable; it’s compulsive reading. But we all know that ideas spread, fashions change and people evangelize others to new ideas using clever marketing techniques. Do we really need a pseudo-scientific theory and explanation for something as commonsensical as that?