I'm familiar with his work -- I've read excerpts from The Tipping Point and I use some of its philosophies on a daily basis in my classroom. I've skimmed Outliers when I read Dweck's Mindset last year since they both deal with the psychology of success. Blink has been on my list of books to read when I finally have time for longer than I want to admit.
I didn't even know this existed until my older brother received it as a birthday gift. He didn't seem terribly excited, so I picked up the book and skimmed the back while we watched him open the rest of his equally mundane gifts.
Except that something about the back of this book sounded awesome.
Gladwell is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, which is known for its strong writing staff and eclectic audience. I haven't touched it in years, to be honest -- I barely have time for what I read now, let alone adding a behemoth of fresh reading every month.
But as it turns out, the magazine may be worth my time.
This book's content is a series of essays Gladwell originally wrote for The New Yorker. Some are older, published as far back as 1994, while others are newer, closer to 2012 or 2013. Some cover topics I've never once given a second thought, like Ron Popeil and his makeover of home shopping. Some cover topics of great personal interest, like hiring the right teachers to be successful, or how much being smart actually matters in the real world.
And then others, like why it is we have a million types of mustard but only one type of ketchup, are so off the wall and unusual that I can't help but be curious.
The beauty of Malcolm Gladwell's writing lies in its abilities to connect ideas that I had never once considered, such as the connections between the recruitment process for college quarterbacks into the NFL and how we recruit and hire teachers for America's public schools, or why banning certain breeds of dogs, like pit bulls, represents a mistaken application of generalization. There is so much detail poured into each of these essays (there are close to 20) that I am almost blown away -- each must have taken months to construct and write, and each represents a wealth of knowledge and insight into the topics at hand.
Some, like one about Enron that questions how badly the company truly falsified its earnings, or the one analyzing stock market losses and gains as it discusses Nassim Taleb's analysis of risk and its application for the economy, introduce entirely new information. (I found that, like The Sixth Extinction, I was incredibly grateful for my smartphone.) I learned so much! I've never understood the stock market very well, for example, but the careful attention to audience and detail meant that, with a little concentration and research, I could suddenly converse on the subject with others. That's the mark of a truly well put together piece right there: It is not only thought-provoking and hard to put down, but it is teaching those who read it and inspiring them to take that knowledge further.
Gladwell may be one of the smartest minds alive right now. To have the mind that can make those kinds of connections! To be able to hold all that information in your head at once! I love what I do, and there have been moments in my life when I've revealed what I'm thinking about to my husband and he says something to the effect of, "I can't believe your brain works like that!" And in those moments, I am just the tiniest bit like Malcolm Gladwell.
Maybe, with a lot more learning and perhaps 50 more years of reading in my spare moments between grading and teaching, I can be a writer like him, the kind of writer I'd like to be.
It's weird in a way -- as soon as I started reading more of his work and mentioning it to others, his name and work started popping up all over the place. My mom has read and loved Outliers, about success. My dad has followed his essays online for years. My librarian friend at school loves The Tipping Point. I'd never once had a conversation with any of these people about his work, and yet some of the people I interact with the most were reading him.
What else out there might be like that? I lugged home every one of his books I could find from my school library, and I'll easily be reading them from now until the New Year. What other amazing, new, exciting things could I learn about, if only I knew what to ask for?
With that in mind, I think nonfiction will be my reading of choice for a while. There's so much out there, so much weird and wonderful truth waiting to be discovered, and I can't wait to dive in.
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