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
The New 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.
