Gladwell All Over
Dec. 30th, 2013 05:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
supergeeSeems like everybody's mad at Malcolm Gladwell for David and Goliath. They complain about the facile moralizing and sloppy detail work, and put him on lists with the likes of Thomas Friedman and Richard Cohen. Me, I felt that way about Outliers and find this one a little less annoying and with more good parts.
Carol Tavris, the author of The Mismeasure of Woman, pointed out that there's no money in books about the similarities between the sexes. Likewise, there's no money in books about how people can succeed if they have ability, so Gladwell takes the opposite tack and tells us some enjoyable stuff along the way. My favorite part may not be something he intended. We learn that the president of Goldman Sachs is a pushy prick who can't read and lied his way into at least his first job. It's no less than I expected of the organization.
Carol Tavris, the author of The Mismeasure of Woman, pointed out that there's no money in books about the similarities between the sexes. Likewise, there's no money in books about how people can succeed if they have ability, so Gladwell takes the opposite tack and tells us some enjoyable stuff along the way. My favorite part may not be something he intended. We learn that the president of Goldman Sachs is a pushy prick who can't read and lied his way into at least his first job. It's no less than I expected of the organization.
