Malcolm Gladwell is a brilliant writer. This book is a collection of his favorite stories he wrote over the years as a staff writer at The New Yorker.
Some back story on my love for Malcolm: My sister, Colette, told me a few years back that she had just read a book she knew I would love. A few months later the book was in my hands and devoured. She always just knows me so perfectly. Eventually, I read several books by Malcolm: Outliers, Tipping Point, and Blink. He is such an intriguing writer that he takes the world as you know it, shakes it up a bit, and things never quite go back the way they were. And it's better that way.
Then, one day, I found myself in Kansas City waiting for my friend, Paige, to finish her job interview. While waiting, I turned to the office magazines for entertainment. There was an article with a graphic of all of my favorite writers in progression, but there was a new one. A brilliant and handsome young professor had looked at Malcolm's book, Tipping Point, researched it via experiments, and found much of it was only partially right. The article went on and on about how brilliantly smart he was. I got online and ordered the book before the interview was finished, and then waited eagerly for its arrival when I returned home. (This is significant only because I am not an impulse shopper of any kind.)
The book was:
The book was completely read within hours of arrival. It made a lot of interesting points. I learned a lot of new things. But I found myself disappointed. Let's just say that I didn't put the book down feeling inspired, I just felt better informed. And that was it.
The book really left me wondering: What is it about Malcolm Gladwell's writing that is so compelling?
Reading What the Dog Saw helped solve my mystery.
First, Malcolm is a story teller. Sure, he presents interesting facts, but he whets your curiosity with an intriguing story. The facts and details perfectly orchestrated to bring you to an interesting question. That's always section one.
In section two, he introduces you to a person who turns out to be the perfect embodiment of the point he is trying to make. But Malcolm's writing brilliance is in the way that you end section two of every story feeling like you've met this person; he just has the perfect way of describing them. One of my favorite type descriptions (paraphrased description of a salesman): 'He is the kind of guy who, if he was your professor and he taught biology, you would be a biology major.'
In the following sections, he fleshes out the mystery to the point that he turns your thinking of the matter from one direction to a completely new direction. Then back to the person he introduced you to show you to a totally different view of the matter.
And then, the perfect conclusion. Every. Single. Time.
And when you are done each story, you feel something and your mind is blown because he walked you through it so skillfully. You think about it. Your turn it around in your head. You find it weaves itself into later conversations. In fact, a week or so after I finished the book had already worked itself into several of my conversations.
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Just today, I finished a class I found terribly intriguing called, Learning How to Learn on www.coursera.org. I've been devouring it for the last few days. This class contains all of the latest research about the brain and how we best learn, and everything came full circle.
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Back to Malcolm's writing brilliance. He uses analogies and metaphors. This sticks because it hangs on connections in your brain that you already have. In our class, they actually showed us images of the brain where the learning was growing on already formed connections in the brain. Also, if you engage more parts of your brain, you retain things better. I think the way he paints such a skillful picture that you feel like you can see them in your minds eye engages more of the brain.
In the brilliant book, Making It Stick, they talk about what people actually remember, but what they don't explain is the biological reasons why things stick. In one part of the book they talk about a teacher who had decided to start each of his science classes with a mystery, teach his lesson, and then ended class by explaining how the science he had just taught resolved the mystery. He realized he was really on to something one day when he ran out of time to resolve the of the mystery. The bell rang and all of the students were still sitting there in rapt attention. He couldn't figure out why they weren't dashing out to their next class when one of them expressed that they wanted to know how the answer to the mystery. He discovered that there is something about an unanswered question that is engages the human mind in the learning process. I'd like to see more research on brain activity when something is taught via a mystery versus just being presented. But my point is that there is brilliance in Mr. Gladwell's choice to start each story with a mystery.
Making It Stick also talks about the truth that people remember stories, not facts and figures. This is where I feel that Malcolm's writing dominates over Mr. Berger's. He may teach similar facts at the end of the day, but he packages those facts so much better because of his talent at wrapping them up artfully in a story (and mystery) that you will likely not forget. I remember my mom teaching me this when I was a teenager. The Stake President had been visiting on the Sunday I had been asked to give a talk. Later that day, my mom told me that the Stake President really wasn't paying attention until I started to tell a story. She said after that, I had his attention. 'It is because you told a story.' She pointed out, 'That is what holds people's attention.' Many a sacrament meeting I wish other people's mother's had told them the same thing.
Which brings me back to www.coursera.org. It is an innovative, yet elite collection of free courses that one can take online for no credit. One of the first class I took was by a professor at Yale about human irrationality. He started every class with a corny joke and had us rate it. He told us about how he is a burn victim and what made him decide to do what he does. His graphics were phenomenal. He did experiments on us that were mind blowing. I loved it. My running buddies heard all about it on our morning runs. I became a coursera missionary.
Until I took more classes.
Oh my goodness. Some professors are SO BORING. One of the worst was a class taught by professional teachers who teach people how to teach. The content was amazing, but the teachers were horrific. Yes, they started by telling us what they were going to teach, and then following through, and then summarizing. They did everything by the book, but they were so...snore. I didn't learn as much even if I was incredibly intrigued by the content. All I could think was, throw the book out, and learn to teach with energy, passion, and entertainment.
Which brought me to one of my life epiphanies: Really good teachers are also good entertainers.
Malcom Gladwell is a good entertainer when it comes to his ability to write. When you get done reading his work you feel like he is the kind of person who you'd be fascinated to meet at a party. You'd get his number and later go to dinner and you'd sit and talk for hours because he is just so utterly INTERESTING.
And that is how Malcolm Gladwell's books have been able to affect my life.
Next book to read: David and Goliath
![David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants | [Malcolm Gladwell]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41989tFt5PL._SL300_.jpg "David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants | [Malcolm Gladwell]")
