Photo: Brooke Williams
Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer with The New Yorker magazine since 1996. His 1999 profile of Ron Popeil won a National Magazine Award, and in 2005 he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. He is the author of two books, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference," (2000) and "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" (2005), both of which were number one New York Times bestsellers.
From 1987 to 1996, he was a reporter with the Washington Post, where he
covered business, science, and then served as the newspaper's New York
City bureau chief. He graduated from the University of Toronto, Trinity
College, with a degree in history. He was born in England, grew up in
rural Ontario, and now lives in New York City.
What the Dog Saw: And
Other Adventures
Click to order via
Amazon
Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (October 20, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316075841
ISBN-13: 978-0316075848
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
What is the difference between choking and panicking? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard-but only one variety of ketchup? What do football players teach us about how to hire teachers? What does hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century?
In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books that have radically changed how we understand our world and ourselves: The Tipping Point; Blink; and Outliers. Now, in What the Dog Saw, he brings together, for the first time, the best of his writing from TheNew Yorker over the same period.
Here is the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill, and the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz. Gladwell sits with Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen, as he sells rotisserie ovens, and divines the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer" who can calm savage animals with the touch of his hand. He explores intelligence tests and ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias" and why it was that everyone in Silicon Valley once tripped over themselves to hire the same college graduate.
"Good writing," Gladwell says in his preface, "does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head."What the Dog Saw is yet another example of the buoyant spirit and unflagging curiosity that have made Malcolm Gladwell our most brilliant investigator of the hidden extraordinary.
Outliers: The Story of
SuccessHardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (November 18, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316017922
ISBN-13: 978-0316017923
Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an
intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the
brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the
question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay
too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little
attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family,
their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing.
Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it
takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what
made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Amazon Best of the Month, November 2008:
Now that he's gotten us talking about the viral life of ideas and the
power of gut reactions, Malcolm Gladwell poses a more provocative
question in Outliers: why do some people succeed, living remarkably
productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their
potential? Challenging our cherished belief of the "self-made man," he
makes the democratic assertion that superstars don't arise out of
nowhere, propelled by genius and talent: "they are invariably the
beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and
cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense
of the world in ways others cannot." Examining the lives of outliers
from Mozart to Bill Gates, he builds a convincing case for how
successful people rise on a tide of advantages, "some deserved, some
not, some earned, some just plain lucky."
Outliers can be enjoyed for its bits of trivia, like why most pro hockey
players were born in January, how many hours of practice it takes to
master a skill, why the descendents of Jewish immigrant garment workers
became the most powerful lawyers in New York, how a pilots' culture
impacts their crash record, how a centuries-old culture of rice farming
helps Asian kids master math. But there's more to it than that.
Throughout all of these examples--and in more that delve into the social
benefits of lighter skin color, and the reasons for school achievement
gaps--Gladwell invites conversations about the complex ways privilege
manifests in our culture. He leaves us pondering the gifts of our own
history, and how the world could benefit if more of our kids were
granted the opportunities to fulfill their remarkable potential. 'Mari
Malcolm (an Amazon.com Review)
Blink: The Power of Thinking
Without Thinking
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Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Back Bay Books (April 3, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316010669
In his landmark bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?
In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing" - filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.
Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology and displaying all of the brilliance that made The Tipping Point a classic, Blink changes the way you understand every decision you make. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.
The Tipping Point: How Little
Things Can Make a Big Difference
Click to order via Amazon
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Back Bay Books (January 7, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316346624
Why did crime in New York drop so suddenly in the mid-90s? How does
an unknown novelist end up a bestselling author? Why is teenage smoking
out of control, when everyone knows smoking kills? What makes TV shows
like Sesame Street so good at teaching kids how to read? Why did Paul
Revere succeed with his famous warning?
In this brilliant and groundbreaking book, New Yorker writer Malcolm
Gladwell looks at why major changes in our society so often happen
suddenly and unexpectedly. Ideas, behavior, messages, and products, he
argues, often spread like outbreaks of infectious disease. Just as a
single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a few
fare-beaters and graffiti artists fuel a subway crime wave, or a
satisfied customer fill the empty tables of a new restaurant. These are
social epidemics, and the moment when they take off, when they reach
their critical mass, is the Tipping Point.
In The Tipping Point, Gladwell introduces us to the particular
personality types who are natural pollinators of new ideas and trends,
the people who create the phenomenon of word of mouth. He analyzes
fashion trends, smoking, children's television, direct mail and the
early days of the American Revolution for clues about making ideas
infectious, and visits a religious commune, a successful high-tech
company, and one of the world's greatest salesmen to show how to start
and sustain social epidemics.
The Tipping Point is an intellectual adventure story written with an
infectious enthusiasm for the power and joy of new ideas. Most of all,
it is a road map to change, with a profoundly hopeful message--that one
imaginative person applying a well-placed lever can move the world.
