What the Dog Saw (Book Review)
As an author Malcolm Gladwell is a man after my own heart, a lover of anecdote and trivia, who weaves investigative journalism around the underlying truths of what it means for each of us to be human beings on this planet, at this time and in this context. As a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine for nearly 15 years, Malcolm makes short work of large concepts in ways that always seem to leave me feeling he has, after all was said and done, plainly stated the obvious. I think that’s a critical writing skill most contemporary journalism appears to lack.
In What the Dog Saw: and other stories the best of Malcolm Gladwell’s articles from The New Yorker have been republished in the elegant small hardcover style that appears to be his trademark. Hard cover, white, sporting an almost stock-art image directly under the title. His books are as much designed to be held and read as they are to attract the buyers eye in the bookshop.
Is it cheaper to cure homelessness than it is to treat homelessness (Million-Dollar Murray: why problems like homelessness may be easier to solve than manage)? What is the difference between prodigy like Picasso and the experimental mindset of Cezanne (Late Bloomers: why do we equate genius with precocity)? Why are criminal profilers given such weight when a study showed only a 2.7 per cent success rate in affecting arrests (Dangerous Minds: criminal profiling made easy)? What is the difference between solving a puzzle as compared to a mystery (Open Secrets: Enron, intelligence, and the perils of too much information)? What is the difference between the physicality of panic and the almost unintuitive response of choking in a given situation of stress (The Art of Failure: why some people choke and others panic)? Each of the 22 articles is around 25 – 30 pages in length making it an ideal coffee table book for the casual reader.
In the preface (repeated inside the dust cover) Gladwell writes, “Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else’s head.” He is an amazing writer that I find inspirational. In some part at least he is both a cause and effect of my own journey towards journalism.
You might get a lot out of reading Malcolm Gladwell’s archive of articles he has published in The New Yorker freely available online. However, there is just no comparison between the experience of the book in comparison to the austerity of the computer screen.
