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David and Goliath

Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
Community comment are the opinions of contributing users. These comment do not represent the opinions of Alameda County Library.
Feb 21, 2020JMPerkins rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
A meandering tour of well crafted, interesting, but somewhat thin anecdotes (and accompanying interpretations) on the theme of asymmetric challenges and conflicts (and how to win them). I perhaps would have rated this higher had I not read some of Malcolm Gladwell’s other books (Outliers, Blink, Ect). However, having done so, David and Goliath felt like nothing so much as Malcolm Gladwell rewriting the same book, or -perhaps more precisely- writing to the same book template with this being one of the weaker instances. As an example, the gimmick of ‘meanwhile back at the ranch’ (switching between anecdotes/illustrative stories at their cliff hanger-esque inflection points) felt especially overused and tiresome though this is just one of a number of prose tics that help propel his books that felt especially trite in this one. I still got a lot out of the book; I enjoyed his thoughts on legitimacy, the diminishing marginal returns/U shaped curve where the application of more _ [money, power, force] has counter productive effects effects, how hardship & near misses can produce exceptional people and states of mind (if it doesn’t wreck a person) and his continual illustration (in multiple arenas) that -to ‘win’ in the less powerful position requires a certain muscled disagreeableness coupled with an utter refusal to play the game by the ‘rules’ (as distinct from following the laws). But the book was thin on data, heavy on anecdotes (which seemed uncomfortably conscripted into the shape of a gangly book rather than natural bedfellows), and the insight/interest per page was almost (but never quite) enough to make me abandon the thing. Technically, I listened to the Audiobook version and can say that Malcolm Gladwell is an accomplished reader of his own work.