Synopsis
After his first book reached a tipping point and became a runaway bestseller, Malcolm Gladwell shot to stardom in a blink and became an outlier in the realm of popular nonfiction. But those who have only read Gladwell in book form have been missing out on some of his most intriguing insights and ideas, which have appeared in his delightfully eclectic and captivating articles for The New Yorker. This volume collects the best of those pieces, on topics including (but not limited to): hair dye, homelessness, kitchen utensils, birth control, criminal profiling, dog training, Enron, plagiarism, NASA, choke artists, job interviews, ketchup and mustard, the nature of intelligence, black swans, pattern fallacy, pit bulls, and, perhaps most famously, spaghetti sauce. Gladwell's ability to weave the tangled threads of our culture into a tapestry of singular wisdom is unparalleled, and this essential anthology of his essays allows readers to observe as he gleans fundamental truths from an astounding array of evidence.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2009-10-20 |
| Size | | Length: | 410 pages | | Height: | 8.3 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 18.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
Collects the best New Yorker pieces by the best-selling author of Outliers including essays on such topics as why there are so many kinds of mustard but only one type of ketchup, a surprising assessment of what makes a safer car, an examination of a machine built to predict hit movies, and many more.
Industry Reviews
"This book full of short conversation pieces is a collection that plays to the author's strengths. It underscores his way of finding suitably quirky subjects...and using each as gateway to some larger meaning. It illustrates how often he sets up one premise...only to destroy it....This book's voice always sounds level-headed, whether it is describing ketchup being tasted or pit bulls attacking a boy. It tames visceral events by approaching them scientifically."
(10/20/2009)
"...Gladwell displays an easy-going writing style and a sharp critical mind. This is the kind of essay collection you can read from cover to cover or, just as satisfactorily, dip into a bit at a time."
(10/15/2009)
"What makes Malcolm Gladwell...so extraordinary is his ability to focus on any topic from the arcane to the apparently banal, research it with shrewd intelligence and wholehearted engagement, then weave in other thoughts and themes that may seem unrelated until he subtly illuminates their relevance. The result is unfailingly riveting."
(11/01/2009)
"Gladwell is a writer of many gifts....He avoids shopworn topics, easy moralization and conventional wisdom, encouraging his readers to think again and think different. His prose is transparent, with lucid explanations and a sense that we are chatting with the experts ourselves. Some chapters are masterpieces in the art of essay....But [he] frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring."
(11/15/2009)
"Gladwell is an old-fashioned control freak, a master essayist who obeys the imperative of his generation -- Thou Shalt Appear Effortless. Here's what you thought you knew, he tells us. Here's what it looks like from another angle -- the angle of failure, say, or the point of view of the dog being whispered to, or the writer whose work has been plagiarized. Before you get all up about something, take a look at which buttons are being pressed...."
(11/22/2009)
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