What if we lived in a world where the weak were really strong, and all of our disadvantages could easily become advantages? In his new book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, best-selling writer Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers) tells us we’re already living in that kind of world. Even something as debilitating as dyslexia can be an ambitious man’s ticket to success.
“The one trait in a lot of dyslexic people I know is that by the time we got out of college, our ability to deal with failure was very highly developed,” says Gary Cohn, a man of humble origins whose bold decisions take him to the top of the U.S. financial industry. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without my dyslexia.”
Gladwell, a staff writer at the New Yorker, has sold a ton of books explaining seemingly counterintuitive and complex arguments about psychology and the social sciences to a mass audience. In David and Goliath his mission is to show us how our thinking about power, influence and success is often misguided and wrong. “We have, I think, a very rigid and limited definition of what an advantage is,” Gladwell writes. “When we see the giant, why do we automatically assume the battle is his for the winning?”
As always, Gladwell populates his pages with insights illustrated by one memorable character study and anecdote after another. He can be an efficient and persuasive storyteller, and in this book his cast of “Davids” include French Impressionist painters, undersized basketball players and civil-rights marchers; his “Goliaths” include the French art establishment, basketball traditionalists and segregationist police chiefs.
Gladwell, a staff writer at the New Yorker, has sold a ton of books explaining seemingly counterintuitive and complex arguments about psychology and the social sciences to a mass audience. In David and Goliath his mission is to show us how our thinking about power, influence and success is often misguided and wrong. “We have, I think, a very rigid and limited definition of what an advantage is,” Gladwell writes. “When we see the giant, why do we automatically assume the battle is his for the winning?”
As always, Gladwell populates his pages with insights illustrated by one memorable character study and anecdote after another. He can be an efficient and persuasive storyteller, and in this book his cast of “Davids” include French Impressionist painters, undersized basketball players and civil-rights marchers; his “Goliaths” include the French art establishment, basketball traditionalists and segregationist police chiefs.