What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell.

3/5 rating. 410 pages.

Book #17 of 2021. Read February 17, 2021.

This is a collection of The New Yorker articles written by Malcolm.

While I generally love everything that Malcolm does – his writing, his podcasts – I thought that this collection was a little underwhelming. There are some good stories in here – though it took until Part 2 for me to really enjoy any – but I think that the gift that Malcolm possesses that sets him apart from almost any author is his ability to pull together disparate facts and weave them into a story. When I am left just reading around twenty of his different articles, it takes away this ability to have some through-line.

I did enjoy the different Enron articles, and some of the ones about our everyday paradoxes, but altogether, I would recommend almost any other of Malcolm’s books before this one. When you are able to see the connections he makes, and some ideas come together for the first time for you while reading one of those, you can understand where his true genius lies.

Quotes:

“Touch is an incredible tool. It’s another way to speak.”

“Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material.”

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