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What the Dog Saw

by Malcolm Gladwell

3.73 · rating details · 12,605 ratings · 1,800 reviews

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 20<sup>th</sup> century?
In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books th...more

Hardcover, 410 pages

Published October 20th 2009 by Little, Brown and Company (first published October 1st 2009)

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Jun 11, 2011

Karen rated it

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Shelves: business, nonfiction, pop-psyche, sociology

In What the Dog Saw, Gladwell offers a treasure chest of gems, each shining brightly on their own. In each essay, Gladwell usually starts with one puzzling situation and then adds information and other narratives to complicate the topic. Then the first situation resurfaces midway and at the conclusion, helping to bring the topic to closure. Most of the time, his underlying thesis runs along the lines of "Wow, things are a lot more complicated or a lot more simple than they seem." He...more

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Feb 10, 2010

Richard rated it

Recommended to Richard by: Trevor McCandless

Shelves: cognition, non-fiction

I hadn't realized this was a collection of Gladwell's essays, many (most? all?) have seen publication in the New Yorker. I found this out while reading the New York Times essay on the book, Malcolm Gladwell, Eclectic Detective, by none other than Steven Pinker. His evaluation of What the Dog Saw is ~~mostly laudatory~~ pretty hostile*, ~~although~~ and he takes the opportunity to get a dig in at Outliers:

The reasoning in “Outliers,” which consists of cherry-picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry and false

...more

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Apr 13, 2011

Tania Lukinyuk rated it

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I finally-finally finished it! But not because it is boring - it is collection of articles by Gladwell, so it does not go down like one single book. All articles clearly demonstrate inquisitive mind and quick wit of Gladwell, but not all of them are of equal interest and thrill. Some articles feel like they are concocted out of thin air, some are too plain and unexcited. But I was fascinated by the stories of colorant revolution in the US, value of talent and specifics of human perceptions at jo...more

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Dec 06, 2011

Loy Machedo rated it

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After being rejected by more than a dozen advertising agencies, Malcolm Gladwell went from obscurity to literary reverence. I mean the guy can write. Not just write but write about stuff we take so for granted and wish we had asked the same questions he asks.

One of the most imaginative non-fiction writers of our times, a man who not has had 3 best sellers and a title to die for (being judged as the Time magazine’s 100 most influential people) – his strength is his innate ability to mak...moreAfter being rejected by more than a dozen advertising agencies, Malcolm Gladwell went from obscurity to literary reverence. I mean the guy can write. Not just write but write about stuff we take so for granted and wish we had asked the same questions he asks.

One of the most imaginative non-fiction writers of our times, a man who not has had 3 best sellers and a title to die for (being judged as the Time magazine’s 100 most influential people) – his strength is his innate ability to make his readers think and think really deep.

Gladwell’s latest concoction of articles that he mixed into this recipe titled ‘What the dog saw’ is not just another master-piece in itself, it boarder lines between absolute genius to total unwanted and unnecessary banal details of generalized points of view, leaving you with many more questions than you would hope for. I mean the guy is great in his observations but then again you would ask yourself, do you really want to know all what he has spend time researching on or is it better to just know a few bits and forget the rest? I think that is a question you would have to ask yourself.

So what do we have in this brilliant bible of articles? Here are a few thoughts..
Have you ever wondered why there is only one kind of ketchup but so many kinds of mustards?
What made the Veg-O-Matic so successful and why?
Cesar Millan, the American "Dog Whisperer" – How did he manage to tame any ferocious wild dog by just ‘whispering’ to the dog…Or rather…what did the dog see that the dog choose to listen to an unknown human being?

All this and much more with the shards of Nassim Taleb (author of the best seller ‘Black Swan’ and ‘Fooled by Randomness’) to where Led Zeppelin got his magic note in ‘Whole Lotta Love’, to the toxic historical disasters of Enron, the envious success of George Soros and Warren Buffet and finally to why it is a venial sin to prognosticate either breeds of dogs, serial killers or for that matter successful corporate honchos.

The book is filled with all these brilliant findings that make you think and at times give you an awful headache as to how much there is to know. But you have to admit – the indefatigably curious journalist and writer whose brand today is defined in terms of ‘counter intuitive findings from little known experts’, I have to admit, I love reading his work.
The only criticism Malcolm Gladwell can face is being categorized as an eccentric essayist and a dilettante who postulates inconspicuous statistical data spiced up with misleading definitions and magnifies it to sound very credible and convincing yet banal, boring and bluntly ineffective.

I would only tell those critics – Shut up dude. I honestly didn’t understand what you said. But I did understand what Malcolm is trying to say (though deep down I still wonder if I did…)

All in all, brilliant read and a worth while addition to your collection of books though many a times, it can be boring having stacked up with excessive information which you may not want to know about.

Overall rating – 6 out of 10.(less)

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Aug 07, 2011

Kenny Tang added it

MMmmm... Leftover scraps... This book felt like a forced dish of leftovers from other books or articles. It lacked a clear central theme to derive a clear lesson unlike other books in Gladwell's collection like Tipping Point (Small things builds critical mass and changes norm), Blink (Small samples can help make valuable decisions), Outliers (10,000 hours of practice to achieve greatness). This book was just a mish-mash of stories, some good, some so so, but mostly unrelated or at least I was to...more

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Feb 04, 2012

Carol is currently reading it · review of another edition

Another interesting read about fascinating people and their grandiose accomplishments. Just one of Ron Popiel's kitchen gadgets grossed a billion dollars. Ron never stops tinkering in his sprawling Cold Water Canyon home and is the ultimate pitchman. His Dad made and sold the gadgets before him but never recognized his son's work and had multiple wives, so Ron's childhood was far from ideal. But never mind, his sales have far outstripped his Dad's success. When Popiel blew out all records fo...more

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Oct 28, 2011

Greg Linster rated it

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What the Dog Saw: and Other Adventures is a compilation of Malcolm Gladwell's favorite essays that have been published in the New Yorker. Of course, a common critique of the book is that one could dig up the articles individually for free, but I still enjoyed the format. Gladwell has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1996 so he had quite a bit of material to choose from. I've read all three of Gladwell's previous books (The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers) and he is a provocativ...moreWhat the Dog Saw: and Other Adventures is a compilation of Malcolm Gladwell's favorite essays that have been published in the New Yorker. Of course, a common critique of the book is that one could dig up the articles individually for free, but I still enjoyed the format. Gladwell has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1996 so he had quite a bit of material to choose from. I've read all three of Gladwell's previous books (The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers) and he is a provocative story teller who challenges the seemingly obvious. I have a penchant for those who challenge conventional wisdom so this book was naturally up my alley. I thoroughly enjoyed each essay that was included in the book; however, my favorites were: Blowing Up, Million-Dollar Murray, The Art of Failure, and The Talent Myth. I'll briefly touch on the key points from those essays in what follows.

I'm a big fan of Nassim Taleb so naturally I was drawn to Gladwell's essay Blowing Up: How Nassim Taleb Turned the Inevitability of Disaster into an Investment Strategy. Gladwell compares the trading strategies of Victor Niederhoffer, who was at one point one of the most successful money managers in the country, to those of Taleb. These two men took vastly different approaches in terms of strategy. We learn that Niederhoffer's strategy ultimately blows up in his face and he loses the great fortune he had amassed. The essay shines further light on Taleb's trading career and gives some insight into the inner workings of his hedge fund called Empirica. In the end we learn that, "There is more courage and heroism in defying the human impulse, in taking purposeful and painful steps to prepare for the unimaginable."

Million-Dollar Murray: Why Problems Like Homelessness May Be Easier to Solve than Manage is a great essay about problems that have a "power law" distribution. Homelessness and air pollution are two examples cited in the essay. As Gladwell states, "Power-law problems leave us with an unpleasant choice. We can be true to our principles or we can fix the problem. We cannot do both."

Ultimately, our society could be more effective at solving problems involving power-law distributions; however, the solutions often violate our moral institutions as well as our political ones.

What's the difference between panicking and choking? The answer is explored in The Art of Failure: Why Some People Choke and Others Panic. We Live in a society that is obsessed with "success"; however, our society rarely analyzes the failure that is a natural byproduct of pursuing success. To paraphrase Gladwell, panicking is conventional failure; choking is paradoxical failure.

The Talent Myth: Are Smart People Overrated? will surely resonate well with anyone who works in Corporate America or has worked there. McKinsey & Company, a large and prestigious management-consulting firm, is often credited for developing the "talent mind-set" in Corporate America which is the justification for lavish compensation for those with "talent". If you're like me, you are prone to be skeptical of any system that claims to measure something as ambiguous as "talent"; however, that is exactly what corporations world wide tend to do. Gladwell argues that the link between IQ and job performance is distinctly underwhelming; after all, IQ fails to measure things like managing social situations or working in groups. "The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it's the other way around."(less)

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Sep 11, 2011

Robert rated it

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Shelves: 2011

I didn't buy this book because it is a collection of already published articles, nearly all of which I have read already. But I saw it at the library and decided to read it anyway. What a wonderfully fun experience.
There are quite a few criticism I could make of these articles. Gladwell is a storyteller and sometimes lets telling a good story take precedence over reality. In his case, this usually means making all of the pieces fit together just so, instead of revealing the messy way that...more

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Aug 21, 2011

Zahwil rated it

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“What the Dog Saw” by Malcom Gladwell is a really superb collection of essays. The topics covered are diverse, yet deeply insightful and interesting in each case.
The insights that emerge from his essays represent clear and novel thinking applied to situations where there is often a predominant way of thinking that is blinding practitioners, policy makers, and others from seeing the clear solutions that Gladwell presents.
Some examples of the insights that resonated with me include the ...more“What the Dog Saw” by Malcom Gladwell is a really superb collection of essays. The topics covered are diverse, yet deeply insightful and interesting in each case.
The insights that emerge from his essays represent clear and novel thinking applied to situations where there is often a predominant way of thinking that is blinding practitioners, policy makers, and others from seeing the clear solutions that Gladwell presents.
Some examples of the insights that resonated with me include the following. Another of the niceties of Gladwell’s approach is that you can often think of parallel situations to which his insights might be applied.
1. Picking good teachers has a huge impact on the quality of the education that our children receive. A good teacher teaches 1.5x the curriculum in the school year, while a poor teacher teaches only 0.5x. What separates the good from the bad has very little to do with the measures currently used to screen entry into the teaching profession, namely a masters and/or education degree. It turns out that what determines how well teachers teach turns on their interpersonal skills and their ability to engage students on their own terms and provide individual feedback. Gladwell likens the problem to that faced by NFL scouts scouring the ranks of college football. In both cases, there is a problem of predicting in advance who has the qualities necessary to succeed. The solution, argues Gladwell convincingly, is that the teaching profession should open up the flood gates for entry by anyone, and then subject all teachers to a rigorous selection process as interns or trainees. This process would be modeled, for example, after the investment advisor profession. Teachers who are chosen should then be paid well to create the necessary incentives for people to take the risk of entering such a process with high competition.
A parallel example is occupational licensure in general. We live in a time that overlays licensing requirements on hundreds of different professions/personal services, including medicine, law, dentistry, paramedical services, the trades, and even more ordinary vocations like taxi services, real estate and hairdressing. The licenses required for these professions block entry to many individuals based on testing and criteria that may not have much bearing on long-term success within these professions. Allowing broad entry by the many, and then letting the market sort out the few that deserve high compensation would likely increase the quality of the corresponding services while lowering the price of such services to the consumer.

2. When it comes to recruiting by the private sector, Gladwell puts a lot less emphasis on incentives. Here, he argues that we overplay, and thus overpay, the role of individuals in organizations. He provides the example of Enron, where “The War for Talent” was fully internalized through the ranks of management, putting individual fulfillment above all else. Psychology shows us that people who receive praise for their intelligence will tend to define themselves by that identity, and are then more likely to inflate it when asked. These are people who will not own up to their mistakes, and will lie rather than admit failure. In contrast, the trait that spells success in an organizational context is the ability to work well with others. Companies like Southwest Airlines or WalMart, says Gladwell, pay their managers modestly and they succeed because the organization enables them to.

3. Persistent problems, such as homelessness or police brutality, often cannot be remedied by traditional measures because such measures are aimed at the middle of the distribution. However, the Power Law Distribution means that there a few hard cases at the tail of the distribution where the problem is concentrated. For example, soup kitchens and shelters will not derail those with serious drug or alcohol addictions. Those people cost the state enormous sums in medical costs when their problems elevate, and mental illness or physical disability often makes them untreatable in a standard way. These cases, Gladwell suggests, often involve people who need constant supervision and structure to stay on track. Gladwell suggests providing such people with free apartments and the kind of focused intervention that has a real chance of denting the problem of homelessness. This is original thinking because most people tend to think of homelessness according to the stereotypical image of a pan handler or single parent fallen on hard times rather than the real hard cases. The policy remedies are very different in each case.

4. Gladwell differentiates between puzzles and mysteries. In a puzzle, the problem is that we have too little information and we need intelligence to connect the dots and complete the picture. In a mystery, we have too much information and the problem is one of navigating ambiguity or skilled interpretation. In the case of Enron, Gladwell presents the company’s downfall as a landmark case in the Age of Information. Enron did disclose all of the information about its self-dealings with special purpose entities; however, the sheer volume and complexity of these transactions made it difficult for even the experts to interpret.

5. Gladwell differentiates between stable and unstable generalizations. An example of the latter is pitbull dogs, who have been outlawed in several countries and local jurisdictions. However, the number of serious bites linked to pitbulls in unstable over time, and may reflect the total population of pitbulls rather than the harm they cause. Owners may want to keep dangerous animals, and the peculiarities of pitbulls in satisfying these preferences are just a function of their availability and notoriety. But if pitbulls are banned, such owners just switch to new “breeds” and continue to create environments conducive to aggressive dog behavior (starving, chaining, depriving of medical attention, etc.). It’s the care for the dogs by the owners and other safety measures (neutering, fence laws) that can make a more substantive difference than outlawing particular breeds.

By focusing on stable generalizations, correlations that persist over time, we can make our systems of public policy a lot more efficient and effective. Gladwell gives the example of drug enforcement, where unstable generalizations such as number of bags carried, and paying cash for a ticket at the airport have been replaced with stable generalizations such as displayed nervousness or identified contraband.

6. Safety innovations in a commonsense way should result in greater safety – few accidents and casualties. However, Gladwell shows that this is often not the case, as the benefit of the safety innovation is “consumed” rather than saved. By “consumed”, Gladwell means that consumers offset the risk reduction from the safety innovation by taking greater risk in other areas. In the example of antilock breaks, drivers were found to switch lanes more frequently, drive closer to the cars in front of them, and otherwise compensate for the increased safety with more aggressive driving.

This is a very interesting observation because it suggests that reducing the rate of accidents/casualties beyond a certain point may not be possible or desirable. People are comfortable taking on a given level of risk from an activity, and when faced with safety improvements, will consume part of the risk reduction by showing less caution than they otherwise would.

Gladwell also gives the example of flight safety improvements that have been partially offset by offering more flights, more bad weather take-offs and landings, and greater air traffic. These offsets make flying more available and efficient for the many, but prevent the accident rates from going down as much as may have been predicted in the absence of such behavior.

A parallel to this insight, more generally, is “moral hazard”. That is, when people know that the cost or risks of a behavior will be borne by someone else, they tend to engage in it more. So the costs/risks can be transferred to a technological innovation, as in antilock brakes, or to society more generally, as in insurance for homes on floodplains or government bailouts. In both types of situations, the transfer of costs/risks lowers the price of the activity and increases people’s demand/consumption of it.
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Jul 24, 2011

Cortney rated it

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I know, I know. Malcolm Gladwell brings out extremes in readers. In one camp, you have rabid fans who think he is a transcendent genius, who will change previously held beliefs on the strength of one carefully crafted and engaging TED talk. On the other, you have cynics who sneer at the lemmings who behave as I previously described and dismiss him as a pop psychologist. Ok, perhaps that was even more extreme in my description, but the point is I'm in the middle. If one thinks of him as a philoso...more

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Jun 15, 2011

Mike rated it

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Most of these articles are entertaining. They cover an array of topics – birth control, dog-training, healthcare for the homeless, ketchup, intelligence agencies, NFL quarterbacks, Enron, and many more. If there is a single unifying theme, I missed it. However, many of the articles address one or the other side of a coin: reasons for failures/mistakes (e.g., space shuttle mishaps, plane crashes, dud draft picks in professional sports, business crashes) and reasons for success – but even this ...more

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Jun 06, 2011

Jennifer rated it

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Shelves: essays

Brief Description: This book is a collection of essays on a wide variety of topics (ranging from Ron Popeil to the Challenger explosion to pit bulls) by New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell.

My Thoughts: This was my first extended experience with Malcolm Gladwell, whose longer form books I keep seeing everywhere (Blink, Outliers). His very ubiquity (is that even a word? It seems like it is.) made him an author that I thought I should try. Because I’m also a big fan of essays, I thou...more

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May 29, 2011

cat rated it

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Shelves: 100-in-2011

2011 Book 58/100

The one thing that I will say for Malcolm Gladwell is that I am rarely bored. In fact, I am often interested in things and concepts that I never even knew existed before hearing them through his eyes. I have certainly heard the discussions that Gladwell is glib, plays fast and loose with facts, and often knows just enough about a topic to write his essay and not an ounce more, yet I am willing to overlook all of that for the interesting facts and strange details that ...more

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Apr 17, 2011

James rated it

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this was an entertaining read, easily doable from the comfort of a toilet seat. to be sure, that is definitely not a bad thing; it's more a comment on the disjointedness of the essays. there is some effort put into weaving these already published essays into a book, however that seems more to justify their inclusion and republication as a book. gladwell is rebranding his prior work in "what the dog saw."

i haven't read any of his New Yorker articles, so that's not a bad thing....more

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Jan 25, 2011

Josh Meares rated it

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What the Dog Saw is a compilation of Malcolm Gladwell's best writing for the New Yorker. As always, Gladwell's work is informative, provocative, and fun to read. While I don't always agree with Gladwell's opinions, I always enjoy reading them.

In this work, my favorite piece was called "John Rocks Error: What the Inventor of Birth Control Didn't Know About Women's Health". This may surprise you because I'm not a woman, and I'm not really interested in birth control. I am very ...moreWhat the Dog Saw is a compilation of Malcolm Gladwell's best writing for the New Yorker. As always, Gladwell's work is informative, provocative, and fun to read. While I don't always agree with Gladwell's opinions, I always enjoy reading them.

In this work, my favorite piece was called "John Rocks Error: What the Inventor of Birth Control Didn't Know About Women's Health". This may surprise you because I'm not a woman, and I'm not really interested in birth control. I am very interested in the culture of the first century A.D. Strangely enough, Gladwell's essay on modern birth control directly affects how I interpret the events of the first century A.D. as recorded in the Bible.

The major idea that I took from Gladwell's research is that the age of puberty has dramatically decreased in Western societies in the modern age because of advances in medicine and nutrition. Similar changes have been documented in several developing countries, including the Kikuyu tribe of Kenya and several tribes in Papua New Guinea. In our country, teenagers reach sexual maturity (as evidenced by menarche and spermache) at about 13. Girls tend to mature about 6 months earlier than boys. In developing countries, however, the average age at which teenagers reach sexual maturity can be as high as 18 years old! These teenagers reach puberty later (about a year later), then go through puberty much more slowly.

Now, anthropologists knew that girls married very soon after menarche. However, figuring out exactly how much later menarche occurred is a relatively recent development. When it comes to biblical studies, it helps me understand Luke 1:46-55. This passage is called Mary's Song, and I have been trying to wrap my head around how a 13 or 14 year old girl could possibly have composed it. I have been trying to understand how such a young girl could manage the journey to Bethlehem, could convince her parents that an angel visited her, or manage her own household. However, if we take Gladwell's research seriously, it is very unlikely that Mary was 15 when she conceived. Statistically speaking, if Mary conceived as soon as she was physically able, and delivered after nine months, she was probably around 18 or a little older. In that culture, given common marriage customs, she was probably no older than 20 (though we can't say for sure, of course). And that makes Mary's song, and her maturity, a lot easier to interpret.

This research may also have implications on youth ministry and child raising. It seems that the intensity of the hormonal storm of the teenage years is much stronger because of the sheer amount and quality of the food we eat, the scarcity of physical labor (and disease), along with a host of unknown factors. Should we be trying to figure out how to prolong and temper puberty through nutrition? The article is also interesting for its impact on how and why we use birth control, but I don't really have anything to add to that conversation.

On the negative side, Gladwell continues his enmity with innate talent. Gladwell appears to be a moderate Blank Slater (to borrow Pinker's terminology). In other words, people can be whatever they want to be. My own position is that the brain is just like any other physical characteristic. Some people are tall, some are short, some are white, some are black, some are smart, and some aren't. That doesn't make anybody better than anybody else. Like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4 "For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?" When it comes to intelligence, everyone is afraid that it means people ARE less if they aren't as intelligent. That is not true. We all have our own gifts. Now, I do agree with Gladwell that intelligence or talent does not guarantee success. I also agree that we have an unhealthy fascination with talent. But the solution is not to show that talent is unimportant, it is to understand what talent is.

What do you think?
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Jan 05, 2011

Kerstin Olcott rated it

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Shelves: reviewed

What the Dog Saw is a collection of Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker columns written during the same time period as his first three books. I have a bit of love/hate relationship with books made up of newspaper or magazine columns. I always end up bored and enthralled even by the best writers. The first three chapters of this book nearly bored me to tears but then there were chapters I found absolutely fascinating. The chapter on hair dye and its impact on feminism was great. The chapter on the cost...more

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Jan 01, 2011

Sandra Strange rated it

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Shelves: history-and-nonfiction

Another great nonfiction read from Gladwell, this book doesn't have a central thesis, but wanders through people who create such products as hair dye and the birth control pill, through problems and paradoxes of such topics as enron, homelessness, intelligence, and the Challenger explosion, ending with criminal profiling, the relationship of genius and precocity, and some of the fallacies that come with hiring practices, pit bulls, and intelligence measures. The first few accounts were kind of ...more

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Sep 15, 2010

Kiwiflora rated it

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What makes the writing of Malcolm Gladwell so interesting and compelling to read is that he looks at the everyday stuff of life just a little bit differently from the rest of us. He must have been an incredibly curious child, probably driving his parents completely crazy with question after question about absolutely everything. And most of the stuff he writes about is stuff that from time to time may flash through our minds, but there it stops. In 'Outliers', for example, he looks at why Asians ...moreWhat makes the writing of Malcolm Gladwell so interesting and compelling to read is that he looks at the everyday stuff of life just a little bit differently from the rest of us. He must have been an incredibly curious child, probably driving his parents completely crazy with question after question about absolutely everything. And most of the stuff he writes about is stuff that from time to time may flash through our minds, but there it stops. In 'Outliers', for example, he looks at why Asians are so good at maths. This is something we all generally know, but how many of us have actually given it any deep thought? Or in 'The Tipping Point', we accept fashion trends as something we follow because that is what in the shops. But Gladwell takes the example of the sudden and unexpected increase in popularity of people wearing Hush Puppies shoes, of all things.

His latest book is a collection of essays he wrote between 1996 and 2008 while he was working for 'The New Yorker' magazine. Should we really be banning pit-bull terriers, are they really as dangerous as they seem? Why do some people choke or panic when under stress, and what is the difference between choking and panicking anyway? Why are mammograms not necessarily as reliable as we think they are? And why, in the 1950s, did it suddenly become socially acceptable for women to start dyeing their hair when it had always been the domain of hookers and chorus girls? Malcolm Gladwell attempts to find out the answers to these curly questions and a host of others.

It is, of course, intriguing reading, funny, interesting, 'well fancy that'. And he writes it all in such an easy to follow fashion, despite all the facts, figures, reports, trials, examples, interviews that he uses to illustrate and prove his points.

If you look at the review in an esteemed publication such as the New York Times Gladwell does come in for some criticism over the lack of 'technical grounding' on his subjects, his tendency to be genarlise in his writing and to include the reader in his reasonings: the royal 'we'. But as another review observed, he does not profess to be an expert in any of the subjects he writes about. His overwhelming curiosity and writing ability are more than enough to keep the reader engaged, to make us think further about the world we live in and how we try to rationlise what is going on around us.(less)

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Sep 15, 2010

Spencer rated it

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Shelves: audiobook, other-science-current-affairs-etc

This book is the most recent from Malcolm Gladwell, and just as with his other 3 books, I loved it. Gladwell is a brillant thinker. He is able to make remarkable connections between seemingly unrelated things and events, and in the process allows us to view things we are familiar with in an entirely new way. He brings us along on his adventures, carefully drawing us into each story, expertly guiding us through the scientific studies, finally to present us with his fascinating conclusions. Di...more

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Aug 03, 2010

Cindy rated it

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This is a collection of essays Gladwell has written for The New Yorker, all of whom follow his distinct style and knack for taking the stories of people and formulating a perspective that is always intriguing and fresh. I think the way he writes is kind of a very accessible example of sociological study, an area which I’m forever interested in.

The book is divided into three parts: “Obsessives, Pioneers, and Other Varieties of Minor Genius”, “Theories, Predictions, and Diagnoses”, and...more

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Jun 29, 2010

Benjaminxjackson rated it

Every time I read Malcolm Gladwell's work, it makes me think about my life and what is going on around me with a slightly bigger lens. Often, there is something in his work that makes me want to sit up a little straighter and work a little harder.

This book was a collection of his articles written for the New Yorker magazine. All of these pieces were interesting and fun to read. You don't necessarily need to agree with everything in them to enjoy them.

The value of the ar...more

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Jun 06, 2010

Elizabeth rated it

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What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell (pp.432)

Malcolm Gladwell may be one of the most consistently fair and accessible popular non-fiction writers today. In his fourth book, Gladwell capitalizes on the fame of his previous bestsellers (Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers) by publishing 22 articles previously printed in the New Yorker. Where his last books have had a central theme, the articles in What the Dog Saw are loosely categorized by theme, but cover a wider span of topics.
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Jun 01, 2010

Elizabeth rated it

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Shelves: non-fiction-other

I'm a fan of Malcolm Gladwell--not because he's always right or because his research is flawless--but because I love to follow his insatiable curiosity about life and how things happen and how things work. Every book of his has caused me to think more deeply or differently about something fairly commonplace, and that's good for me!

The title of this book comes from his modus operendi of just being curious about all sorts of random things and asking questions. In his exploration of th...more

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May 19, 2010

David rated it

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Collection of his essays from the New Yorker. As I seldom read the New Yorker, it felt like a new book to me. I like Gladwell a lot, and judging from the sales of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers I am not alone. He's funny, writes well and clearly, takes on interesting subjects, and makes unusual connections of disparate phenomena.

As various critics have pointed out, though, his style of marshaling anecdotes in support of a (typically contrarian) thesis can be unconvincing i...moreCollection of his essays from the New Yorker. As I seldom read the New Yorker, it felt like a new book to me. I like Gladwell a lot, and judging from the sales of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers I am not alone. He's funny, writes well and clearly, takes on interesting subjects, and makes unusual connections of disparate phenomena.

As various critics have pointed out, though, his style of marshaling anecdotes in support of a (typically contrarian) thesis can be unconvincing if you think about it too hard. An example from this collection: the overall point of the Enron essay is that more of our diagnostic challenges these days are "mysteries" (we're drowning in info but have a hard time interpreting it, in this case publicly available financial statements about enron before they were exposed) rather than "puzzles" (we need more pieces of info to complete the picture -- exs. Watergate coverup, Bin Laden whereabouts). Not doing it justice here in this brief review, but reading the whole essay you start to think "hey, good point. crisp distinction, Malcolm. You da man". But....to test this in any meaningful way, you'd need (a) a reliable coding scheme for mystery vs. puzzle, (b) some way of delimiting, and then counting, the cases in the field of inquiry we're talking about, (c) a survey of whether the mysteries are indeed more prevalent in recent years. Anybody going to do that study? Not likely. So it's more entertaining (to me) than just reading another editorial saying that Jeffrey Skilling and his enron colleagues were immoral jerks, or that the workers should have had diversified retirement accounts, but in the end it's not a thesis of which you can be confident.

Even when the problem is much more tractable (e.g., in discussing the problem of predicting future performance by employees, he labels "the quarterback problem" the fact that a college QB can look great against college defenses but fail to develop as an NFL star because the same stuff doesn't work against bigger, faster defenders), Gladwell doesn't ground what he's saying in any sort of empirical study (have there been more Tim Couch/Ryan Leaf-type QB busts or more Tony Mandarich-level lineman busts? -- this should be figure-out-able, but he just labels and it and moves on to whatever other phenomena this trend supposedly illuminates.)

So that's my Gladwell quibble, but on the whole it's an informative, original, interesting read.
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May 18, 2010

Melani rated it

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Okay, so I really enjoyed this Malcolm Galdwell book too... I found myself always saying things about it and referencing it in what I am sure was a very tiresome way for my associates. I am sure that they would say that I have already said enough about the book. However, I cannot resist saying here how pertinent and readable these essays were to me. I especially enjoyed the Ronco one... very interesting. I think that Gladwell does a very good job of making everything and everyone seem intere...more

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May 14, 2010

Tim rated it

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3 stars

Malcolm Gladwell is at his best when he's questioning conventional wisdom, making compelling, seemingly counterintuitive arguments that the way we look at a certain issue (genius, viral trends, decision making) is not the only way or the best way to look at it. Several of the essays in this collection do just that--they point out the dangerous similarities between criminal psychological profiling and small-time magician mind reading tricks, argue that plagiarism may not be as ...more

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Mar 23, 2010

Erik rated it

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Gladwell, the clever mind behind The Tipping Point and Outliers, returns with a collection of essays culled from his decade-or-so-long work in The New Yorker. Although the first half is luke-warm, compared to what I’ve previously read of his, he truly does save the best for last.

In “Connecting the Dots”, Gladwell tackles the poltically thorny question of why counter-terrorism intelligence is mediocre at best. Putting failed intelligence in context with the failure to prevent the US ...moreGladwell, the clever mind behind The Tipping Point and Outliers, returns with a collection of essays culled from his decade-or-so-long work in The New Yorker. Although the first half is luke-warm, compared to what I’ve previously read of his, he truly does save the best for last.

In “Connecting the Dots”, Gladwell tackles the poltically thorny question of why counter-terrorism intelligence is mediocre at best. Putting failed intelligence in context with the failure to prevent the US Embassy bombing in Kenya, he astutely notes:

What we don’t hear about is all the other people whom American intelligence had under surveillance, how many other warnings they received, and how many other tips came in that seemed promising at the time but led nowhere. The central challenge of intelligence gathering has always been the problem of “noise”: the fact that useless information is vastly more plentiful than useful information.

In “The Talent Myth”, Gladwell uses the financial disaster of Enron and its narcissistic corporate culture to help illustrate why so-called superstars are almost anything but. That is, no matter how intelligent you are, that cannot make up for being inept when it comes to possessing tacit knowledge.

Tacit knowledge involved things like knowing how to manage yourself and others and how to navigate complicated social situations.

Rather, tacit knowledge is actually more rewarded in real life over the long-term. (And I can think of a few self-professed geniuses who float their boats with a lot of hot air, but who are social and financial disasters of Titanic-proportions.)

Finally, in “Troublemakers”, Gladwell turns his eye towards the notorious pit bull breed, but comes to a rarely heard conclusion.

The strongest connection of all, though, is between the trait of dog viciousness and certain kings of dog owners. In about a quarter of fatal dog-bite cases, the dog owners were previously involved in illegal fighting. The dogs that bite people are, in many cases, socially isolated because their owners are socially isolated, and they are vicious because they have owners who want vicious dogs.

Which reminds me all too well of the pit bulls that several of my students families’ have owned over the years. Not to mention the pit bull owned by a thuggish family who was put down recently after clamping onto the hand of one of my student’s. Give me a basset hound or beagle any day.
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Mar 12, 2010

Jamie rated it

Unlike Outliers, The Tipping Point, or Blink, Malcom Gladwell's newest book What the Dog Saw isn't an examination of one topic cut from whole cloth, but rather an eclectic mix of articles that originally appeared in The New Yorker. In it he examines everything from why it's impossible to improve on Ketchup, why Enron's failure was a mystery but not a puzzle, what makes for a good dog trainer, and what FBI criminal profilers have in common with psychics. It's good stuff.

The format of ...moreUnlike Outliers, The Tipping Point, or Blink, Malcom Gladwell's newest book What the Dog Saw isn't an examination of one topic cut from whole cloth, but rather an eclectic mix of articles that originally appeared in The New Yorker. In it he examines everything from why it's impossible to improve on Ketchup, why Enron's failure was a mystery but not a puzzle, what makes for a good dog trainer, and what FBI criminal profilers have in common with psychics. It's good stuff.

The format of What the Dog Saw actually highlights one of the things I really like about Gladwell's style: he takes a single interesting idea and then dives really deep with it, meticulously building towards a conclusion by snapping together what at first appear to be wholly disparate elements but by the end form a strong pattern. What do homeless people in Reno have to do with the Rodney King Riots? What does the song "Last Christmas" by Wham! have to do with accusations of plagiarism on Broadway? What do the late John F. Kennedy Jr. and (almost) tennis superstar Jana Novatna have in common? Gladwell pulls them together and makes it riveting despite the fact that the language and tone he uses in his writing is usually pretty tame and without a whole lot of personality.

This is not to say, however, that Gladwell isn't completely without his shortcomings, and indeed his habit of fitting pieces together can sometimes be revealed to be a flaw in his writing if you're after a complete picture. Specifically, he seems to sometimes selectively pick what research he reports on and who he talks to, possibly in the service of forming a coherent and simplified story. This only really became evident to me when I a story on one of the topics where I somewhat approach being an expert: the use of general intelligence to predict job performance. Not only does Gladwell conflate intelligence with "talent" (a term that probably has different meanings to different people), he sells cognitive ability short by deriding its small (in absolute terms) relationship with job performance without giving consideration to the piles of research saying that while the correlation isn't a perfect 1.0, it's still really high relative to other predictors like emotional intelligence.

On the other hand, Gladwell's excellent essay on the benefits of structured interviews should be required reading for all HR managers and anyone involved in interviews. Go read it here. If you liked it, you'll probably like the rest of the book as well.(less)

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Mar 03, 2010

Julie rated it

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Shelves: business-and-society

I've got to hand it to Malcolm Gladwell; the man knows how to engage his reader. What the Dog Saw is a collection of articles Gladwell has written over the last ten years or so, each about 20-30 pages. Frankly, I think this is the perfect length for his writings, long enough to delve into the topic, but not so long that it feels he's making the same point over and over. The Time review called Gladwell "an omniscient, many-armed Hindu god of anecdotes," and that's actually what it feels...more

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Feb 14, 2010

Briano rated it

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Malcolm Gladwell is not a true social scientist. He's a pop-intellectual. If you read his work expecting a thorough scientific investigation of a topic or the careful formulation of a new theory, you will be disappointed. What Gladwell does do well though is make sociological, scientific, or psychological concepts easily accessible through well-researched and interesting examples. In fact, his greatest gift is his ability to find curious examples and/or data that don't seem obviously connect...more

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About Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell is a United Kingdom-born, Canadian-raised journalist now based in New York City. He is a former business and science writer at the Washington Post. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He is best known as the author of the books The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000), Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), and Outl...more

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Obsessives, Pioneers, and Other Varieties of Minor Genius

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“Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuede. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone elses head.
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“Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else's and says, angrily, 'I don't buy it.' Why are they angry? Good writing 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—even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be.” — 4 people liked it

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