Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘What the Dog Saw’

Posted: April 18th, 2010 | Author: Thomas Attila Lewis | Filed under: Book Review | Tags: Book, Book Review, Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker, What the Dog Saw | No Comments »

We’re big fans of Malcolm Gladwell’s work and think that anyone who is looking for something interesting to read should pick up his other books: The Tipping Point, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, and Outliers: The Story of Success. Gladwell has a knack for identifying different perspectives on popular topics, thoroughly investigating them, and positioning them without too many judgements.

It’s not that I agree with everything Gladwell comes up with, I particularly had some issues with Outliers, but I don’t read Gladwell to subscribe to a worldview, I read his work to become more informed and entertained at the same time. Is there a business application for every chapter of every book of his? Absolutely not, but I enjoy how his writing jogs my mind and that’s the point.

Let’s be clear that What the Dog Saw and other adventures is not new territory for Gladwell, it’s a republishing of “the best” of his New Yorker essays from 1996 to 2008. We’re avid New Yorker readers but there were several pieces in the collection that we had missed and felt fortunate to have a chance to read them, including “The Ketchup Conundrum” (why is there a market for dozens of mustards but only 1 or 2 ketchups?), “Million Dollar Murray” (why problems like homelessness should be solved and not just “managed”), and “The Art of Failure” (why some people choke and others panic and the difference between the two). It was also great to get reacquainted with pieces like “What the Dog Saw” (a profile of dog-whisperer Cesar Millan), “Something Borrowed” (what is plagiarism), and “The Talent Myth” (are smart people overrated and how smart are they anyway?).

With excellent profiling and background research, Gladwell gets defining quotes from his subjects, from FBI serial killer profilers to Enron executives. Gladwell excites the reader by artfully wending a path to points of realization – Eureka moments founded on fact and interview. Perhaps What the Dog Saw is best as an introduction to Gladwell’s style, with no essay much longer than 20 pages, if you aren’t engaged with a particular subject you know that it will end soon and you’ll be on to something else. If you are still leery of jumping in, keep your eyes peeled for another Gladwell essay in an upcoming issue of the New Yorker. They frequently place excerpts, if not the entire piece, on the New Yorker website.

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