What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell

What the Dog Saw

By Malcolm Gladwell

  • Release Date: 2009-10-20
  • Genre: Economics
Score: 4
4
From 454 Ratings

Description

Delve into this "delightful" (Bloomberg News) collection of Malcolm Gladwell's writings from The New Yorker, in which the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia focuses on "minor geniuses" and idiosyncratic behavior to illuminate the ways all of us organize experience.

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 20th century?

In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books that have radically changed how we understand our world and ourselves: The Tipping Point; Blink; and Outliers. Now, in What the Dog Saw, he brings together, for the first time, the best of his writing from TheNew Yorker over the same period.

Here is the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill, and the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz. Gladwell sits with Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen, as he sells rotisserie ovens, and divines the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer" who can calm savage animals with the touch of his hand. He explores intelligence tests and ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias" and why it was that everyone in Silicon Valley once tripped over themselves to hire the same college graduate.

"Good writing," Gladwell says in his preface, "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." What the Dog Saw is yet another example of the buoyant spirit and unflagging curiosity that have made Malcolm Gladwell our most brilliant investigator of the hidden extraordinary.

Reviews

  • Loved it

    5
    By ReaderWriterListener
    I read this book years ago and enjoyed it then, but listening to it now with Malcolm's narration is without doubt the way to go. I loved listening to his Revisionist History podcast and that renewed my interest in his writings and pointed me towards his audiobooks. I find Mr. Gladwell to be an exceptional talent with a voice and perspective that is rarely found in this world. I am fan, and wish him a long life filled with a desire to write and to share. And I wish myself a long life as well, so that I may listen and continue to learn.
  • Not worth it

    2
    By Billyburr#1
    Very boring listen uninteresting stories, uses weak examples for fact... Only 1 or 2 essays were intriguing
  • Great tips on our point of view

    5
    By ericccs_lau
    Interesting stories about human psychology
  • Convincing

    5
    By Tim Cam.
    I'd recommend this book to every curious mind. Mr Gladwell again provides thought-provoking facts and stories that definitely make us to see things different and think out of the box.