Book Review: David and Goliath, by Malcolm Gladwell

I have to admit that I'd been avoiding this book. I had read two of Gladwell's previous, 'Outliers' and 'Tipping Point', and was inspired by them. But after reading Daniel Kahneman's 'Thinking Fast and Slow', which is a similar kind of book, but written by the scientist that had actually done the work he was writing about, I started to think that Gladwell has a tendency to overstate and sugarcoat his case. This approach makes his books fun to read, and it has made him hugely successful at bringing his interpretation of certain psychological ideas into the mainstream. But I can't help but wonder if I'm getting the whole story.

Anyway, it was with some skepticism that I approached 'David and Goliath'. But I enjoyed the heck out of it. Gladwell starts by arguing convincingly that the interpretation of the biblical story of David and Goliath as the archetypal story of the underdog is a wrong interpretation; that actually if you study the story carefully, David is the clear favorite (David is agile with an accurate weapon versus Goliath, who is big and slow with heavy clunky weapons and armor). He then goes on to tell many stories of successful people who've overcome great odds -- from dyslexia, to horrific childhoods -- to become great successes in life. When he delves into these cases in detail, he shows that these individuals did more than simply survive their hardships, they developed unique gifts and strengths that they then used to their advantage in their later careers. The notion, which I know is true from my own experience, is that hardship can yield big rewards. What Gladwell fails to point out, however, is that for every one of the great successes, there are many more coming from hard backgrounds who live sad, and even tragic, lives. 

Gladwell also spends a fair amount of time talking about power and its limitations, likening power wielded wrongly to Goliath. He tells the story of the British occupation of Northern Ireland in the 70's and 80's as a classic example. He also writes about the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham, AL and how the organizers (M.L. King and others) were crafty, eventually manipulating the Birmingham authorities into attacking them, because they believed that there would be public outcry. And they were right! 

He talks about education too. Particularly, how a good deal of misbehavior of K-12 students stems, actually, from poor teaching skill, which he likens to a teacher's misuse of power. And then, of particular interest to me, he shows the stats of publications in top journals past the PhD of graduates from lower, middle, and top-tier schools, which show that students graduating at the top of a lower-tier PhD program do better past the PhD than those graduating from the middle of top-tier PhD programs.

Anyway, the book was fun and inspiring. If you identify yourself with the underdog, you'll especially like it. Still, I'm not sure that I trust completely the warm and fuzzy feeling I get from Gladwell's message.