David and Goliath

Impressions of part one:

I enjoyed the story about David and Goliath, though it was hard to follow at the beginning, once I got to the meat of the story it became much more interesting. Then the expansion to how "underdogs" seem to win with the example of the young girls basketball team was a fub story!

The book takes a turn to the school system to discuss the inverted U curve. Where briefly he talks about how "society" has a belief that is simply not true ( ex: smaller classes = better classes), but because people believe it, it still is prominent.

Impressions about Part 2:

It seems this portion of the book very loosely ties to the title of the book, and is about how "misfits" can succeed because of the trait/truama that made them a misfit. So if I had to guess how this ties to the title of the book, it's how "David's" are made and how their experiences of life lead them to defeat the "Goliaths".

The vibe I got was, "The diversity of life experiences also brings in new ideas and solutions."

However, it is also somewhat grey in the area about the methods these people use to get to where they want to be. Tricking and pretending and "not playing by the rules" because the rules didn't apply fairly to them, so they scrapped the rules and found a way.

It begs that age old question about "Do the ends justify the means?" And the book doesn't specifically say yes or no. It's a morally grey area that one could take a moral high ground, at the expense of empathy for the struggles these people went through.

However, the next part does seem to counter this point with a story about how allowing our emotions to dictate the prison sentences doesn't necessarily mean better results either.

So the usual theme I've read seems to be: there needs to be a balance and no one knows that balance without trying.

Part Three Impressions:

This part seems to bring in new stories reinforce some of the points in Part 2 (being othered and tie them back to part) and timing back to Part 1's inverted U-curve. I think ending seemed abrupt almost like something was missing.

Overall, the book was not a bad read, it provides some good incite and provided thought-provoking stories woven together to discuss statistics and numbers. I think it had a stronger start, and the interest for me slowly dwindle towards the end.

Malcolm Gladwell gets a lot of complaints for his facile overreaching, and those criticisms are legitimate. Gladwell tends to speak in absolutes, then adds weak caveats before speaking in more absolutes, and in the end he has created an entertaining and convincing narrative that is less convincing to those most familiar with the subjects he covers.

I'd read a number of articles critical of David and Goliath before I read the book itself, and I don't say any of them are wrong. And yet, I'm not as bothered by Gladwell as others are.

Certainly Gladwell overreaches in this book. He tells us that adversity can lead to strength, and offers a lot of anecdotes about successful dyslexics and the like. But it's not always persuasive. Even if it's true that an unusual portion of dyslexics are entrepreneurs, does that really mean their dyslexia helped them? Couldn't it mean that dyslexia makes it difficult for smart, talented people to enter certain fields, so they group in other fields where it's less of a disadvantage.

But while you can argue with a lot of Gladwell's claims and analysis, I feel there is an underlying message that is useful; it's not always clear who the underdog is. This is the point of his David and Goliath story, in which he reframes the story to show that it was actually reasonable, and even predictable, that David would come out on top.

Taken as a collection of stories about people who overcame hardship to succeed, David and Goliath is rather inspiring. Gladwell may be wrong in claiming that adversity may ultimately be a good thing, but he makes a decent case that it may not always be as destructive to success as one might think.

It's not his best book, and yes, the formula is wearing a little thin, but it's still quite entertaining.