What we’re reading says a lot about who we are – or who we want to be. In a new feature in the Globe and Mail, Jane Mount asks 100 writers, artists, and foodies to describe what the books that inspire them. I wanted to highlight Malcolm Galdwell’s and Jennifer Egan’s. First up is Gladwell: [...]
Malcolm Gladwell
If incompetence is the disease of the novice, overconfidence is the disease of the expert. This brief clip, which is part of a much longer CSPAN interview with Malcolm Gladwell, discusses overconfidence. Everyone should watch this. Incompetence irritates me, but overconfidence scares me. Incompetent people rarely have the opportunities to make mistakes that greatly affect [...]
We associate the willingness to risk great failure — and the ability to climb back from catastrophe–with courage. But in this we are wrong… There is more courage and heroism in defying the human impulse, in taking the purposeful and painful steps to prepare for the unimaginable. — What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures
In this video Malcolm Gladwell answers a question on whether he views his success as luck or a byproduct of perseverance? What the world craves is differentiation — the things that other people could never have imagined on their own. Still curious? Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author [...]
“You can compensate for talent with effort (and strategy).” In 2009, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a piece for the New Yorker: How David Beats Goliath. In that article, Gladwell points to a group of ill-trained female basketball players, who, despite facing more talented competition, advanced to the California state championship. The story is about more than [...]
An eloquent explanation on the difference between mysteries and puzzles by Gregory Treverton: There’s a reason millions of people try to solve crossword puzzles each day. Amid the well-ordered combat between a puzzler’s mind and the blank boxes waiting to be filled, there is satisfaction along with frustration. Even when you can’t find the right [...]
An excerpt from an Interview with Malcolm Gladwell: It’s an interesting question. I have been reading a lot about the Vietnam War. What’s amazing [about it] is that a set of lessons were painfully learned there, which were completely ignored 30 years later in the Iraq War and Afghanistan. It’s like Vietnam never happened. One [...]
In this video, master storyteller Malcolm Gladwell tells the tale of the Norden bombsight, a groundbreaking piece of World War II technology with a deeply unexpected result. Still curious? Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and, most recently, What the Dog Saw.
