David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants Paperback – Illustrated, April 7, 2015

Whew! Where do I start to convince you to read this thought-provoking, entertaining, page-turning gem?On the title pages of the books I read for these reviews, I usually list 10 to 20 page numbers—with the best stuff I want to talk about.This book: 45 bullet points, all worthy of long paragraphs. It’s pure torture knowing I can’t mention most of them. You gotta read this bestselling book!Malcolm Gladwell is a master at his craft with bestsellers like Outliers: The Story of Success, Blink and The Tipping Point. His latest, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, is classic Gladwell.He writes, “David and Goliath is a book about what happens when ordinary people confront giants. By ‘giants,’ I mean powerful opponents of all kinds—from armies and mighty warriors to disability, misfortune, and oppression. Each chapter tells the story of a different person—famous or unknown, ordinary or brilliant, who has faced an outsize challenge and been forced to respond. Should I play by the rules or follow my own instincts? Shall I persevere or give up? Should I strike back or forgive?”In these memorable stories (I’ve already shared half-a-dozen relevant vignettes with colleagues in the last 10 days), Gladwell explores two ideas: 1) sometimes “the act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty,” and 2) we “consistently get these kinds of conflicts wrong. We misread them. We misinterpret them. Giants are not what we think they are.”So rather than a dozen spoiler alerts here…I’ll give you a True or False test. Mark “True” if you think the following notes are from David and Goliath.TRUE OR FALSE?#1. In the mid-1950s, Swedish furniture manufacturers boycotted IKEA, angry over his low prices. So in 1961, at the peak of the Cold War, IKEA’s founder did business with manufacturers in Poland—the equivalent today of “Walmart setting up shop in North Korea.”#2. Based on the statistical history of wars—the David vs. Goliath types—if Canada waged an unconventional war on the U.S., “history would suggest you ought to put your money on Canada.”#3. In discussing the relationship between parenting and wealth, “The scholars who research happiness suggest that more money stops making people happier at a family income of around $75,000 a year.”#4. “The phenomenon of relative deprivation applied to education is called—appropriately enough—the ‘Big Fish—Little Pond Effect.’ The more elite an educational institution is, the worse students feel about their own academic abilities.”#5. So…where should your kids attend college? Research on college grads concludes that “the best students from mediocre schools were almost always a better bet than good students from the very best schools.”Gladwell divides his stunning findings (told through page-turner true stories) into three parts: 1) “The Advantages of Disadvantages (and the Disadvantages of Advantages),” 2) “The Theory of Desirable Difficulty,” and 3) “The Limits of Power.”More True or False:#6. “We have a definition in our heads of what an advantage is—and the definition isn’t right. And what happens as a result? It means that we make mistakes. It means that we misread battles between underdogs and giants.”#7. In Gladwell’s up-close-and-personal interview with a world class attorney who has dyslexia, the lawyer talks about the advantages of his disadvantages. “Not being able to read a lot and learning by listening and asking questions means that I need to simplify issues to their basics. And that is very powerful, because in trial cases, judges and jurors—neither of them have the time or the ability to become experts in the subject. One of my strengths is presenting a case that they can understand.”#8. George Bernard Shaw once said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”#9. In response to Birmingham police jailing hundreds of children who skipped school to march in the Civil Rights demonstrations, Martin Luther King responded, “Jail helps you to rise about the miasma of everyday life. If they want some books, we will get them. I catch up on my reading every time I go to jail.”#10. A California father, incensed at his daughter’s brutal murder, champions the Three Strikes Law, while a Canadian couple—Mennonites—forgive and move on; “a very practical strategy based on the belief that there are profound limits to what the formal mechanisms of retribution can accomplish.”Business leaders will appreciate this book, but I’m guessing nonprofit and church leaders will love it. They have “against all odds” challenges most days before breakfast. So, have we been looking at “disadvantages/giants” incorrectly? Why might disadvantages actually be advantages?During World War II, the Germans pretty much gave up on disassembling a safe haven for Jews in the French mountain community of Le Chambon. Why? Gladwell says, “wiping out a town or a people or a movement is never as simple as it looks. The powerful are not as powerful as they seem—nor the weak as weak.”I could go on, with another 35 or more mind-grabbing and soul-whacking notes, but I gotta stop. I hope you’ll read this book. Give it for Christmas and you’ll receive appreciative thank you notes. (By the way, all 10 statements above are “True.”)

One of the reasons we love Malcolm Gladwell’s books is the way he uses the art of storytelling to contradict common assumptions about the way things work. In this aspect, his new book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, is full of well-researched, counterintuitive arguments that demonstrate patterns and connect the dots between seemingly unrelated events. In short, it does not disappoint.As we’ve come to expect from a writer of his caliber, Gladwell grips you from the start, with the timeless story of David, the Israelite, and Goliath, the Philistine, and why the duel between them revealed the folly of our assumptions about power.Gladwell argues that we “continue to make that error today, in ways that have consequences for everything, from how we educate our children, to how we fight crime and disorder.”“Why,” he says, “do we automatically assume that someone who is smaller, or poorer, or less skilled is necessarily at a disadvantage?” Especially when history shows us that underdogs win more often than we think. “That’s because underdog strategies are hard,” he notes.“To play by David’s rules, you have to be desperate,” he says. “You have to be so bad that you have no choice.” With stories from basketball to Lawrence of Arabia, he demonstrates how prestige and belonging to elite institutions (think MBAs), can actually limit our options. And how being an underdog and a misfit can give you the freedom to try things no one else has ever dreamt of.He goes on to demonstrate, with some surprising statistics, how too small a class size and too much family wealth can, both be disadvantageous to children, and why it’s wrong to assume that being bigger, and stronger, and richer, is always in our best interest.I found particularly fascinating the story of how the Impressionists succeeded by choosing to be the Big Fish in a Little Pond of their own creation. You’ll learn why the more elite an educational institution is, the worse students feel about their own academic abilities.So, if you did not make it through to the IITs (or Harvard, Yale or MIT), take heart. It’s better to be a Big Fish in a Very Welcoming Small Pond than a Little Fish in a Very Big and Scary Pond, says Gladwell. And going to that less competitive college might be the best thing you’ll ever do for your self-confidence and your career.While it might seem counterintuitive to talent hunters, statistics show that hiring the best students from “mediocre” schools would be better than going after good students from the very best schools. “We have a definition in our heads of what an advantage is – and the definition isn’t right,” says Gladwell. “It’s the Little Pond that maximizes your chances to do whatever you want.”My favourite part, however, was when, using the fact that an extraordinarily high number of successful entrepreneurs (including British billionaire, Richard Branson) are dyslexic, he asks the controversial question, “Can dyslexia turn out to be a desirable difficulty?” Could it be that they succeeded, in part, because of their disorder?When something, like your sense of sight, is taken away from you, your brain compensates by sharpening your other senses. In the same way, could dyslexics learn to compensate for their reading difficulty by becoming better listeners and learning to understand the nuances of human communication better than their peers? That does seem to be the case. As Gladwell states, “What is learned out of necessity is inevitably more powerful than the learning that comes easily.”But the dyslexics who succeed also seem to have a special brand of stubbornness coupled with a highly developed ability to deal with failure, and the tendency to not care a damn for the approval of others - qualities that many a successful entrepreneur shares. These are the coping strategies they developed in a world that looks down on those who cannot keep up academically, but that gave them an advantage in the world of business, where disruption is greatly valued.Personally, I like to see these so-called disorders, that the psychiatric profession is so quick to diagnose nowadays, as “gifts” that help us see the world in ways that others can’t. I used to think it was just me (and a bunch of other people who believe in a more inclusive world) that thought this way, so Gladwell’s argument that being “differently-abled” can be turned into an advantage delights me.I believe that we will, one day, see the same argument put to people with autism. The evidence is already there. We just need someone like Gladwell to dig it up for us.In the vein of what doesn’t kill you make you stronger, his next chapter speaks of the acquired, uncommon courage of those who survive either an event like the bombing of London by the Germans, or of losing a parent in childhood.It reminded me of the courage of the people of Mumbai who are known for going back to work the day after a bombing by terrorists. With so many “remote misses” to create a feeling of invincibility, no other city in India can claim such nonchalance in the face of terror.It’s his chapter on Wyatt Walker that I find the most unsettling, where he defends Walker’s use of children in Birmingham’s civil rights marches. “Our definition of what is right is, as often as not, simply the way that people in positions of privilege close the door on those on the outside,” states Gladwell.Since Birmingham, child soldiers have been used by mercenaries like the Taliban in Afghanistan and Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone in their battle against the Goliaths they were fighting, with disastrous consequences for the children involved (if you want to understand what happened to the children drafted into the RUF, I recommend you watch the Leonardo DiCaprio starrer, Blood Diamond).So, no, I don’t think Birmingham is really the right kind of example to make in the David vs Goliath battles, no matter how worthy the cause.Weaving a common thread through the stories of crime in America, and the war between the Irish and Prostestants in Northern Ireland, Gladwell goes on to show how “the excessive use of force creates legitimacy problems, and force without legitimacy leads to defiance, not submission.”Gladwell wraps up the book with the beautiful and heartwarming story of Andre' Trocme' and the village of Le Chambon in France that protected Jews in defiance of the Nazi invaders. As he notes so eloquently, “The powerful are not as powerful as they seem – nor the weak as weak.”

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants" by Malcolm Gladwell is an absolute masterpiece that captivated me from start to finish. Gladwell's ability to weave together intriguing stories, insightful research, and thought-provoking analysis is simply unmatched. This book is a game-changer, challenging conventional wisdom and reshaping our understanding of what it means to be an underdog.Gladwell's storytelling is both compelling and relatable. He explores the idea that adversity and unconventional circumstances can often lead to unexpected advantages and opportunities. Through a series of captivating anecdotes, he illustrates how individuals and groups can harness their unique strengths to triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds.What I appreciate most about "David and Goliath" is its ability to inspire and empower readers. It encourages us to reevaluate our own challenges and view them through a new lens. Gladwell's writing is not just about storytelling; it's about sparking a shift in perspective and encouraging us to rethink our assumptions about success, power, and the human spirit."David and Goliath" is a must-read for anyone seeking inspiration, insight, and a fresh perspective on life's challenges. Malcolm Gladwell's brilliant narrative style and thought-provoking content make this book a true gem. It has left an indelible mark on me, and I highly recommend it to readers of all backgrounds and interests.v

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