What The Dog Saw
What is the difference between choking and panicking? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard but only one variety of ketchup? What do football players teach us about how to hire teachers? What does hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century? In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books that have radically changed how we understand our world and ourselves: The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. Now, in What the Dog Saw, he brings together, for the first time, the best of his writing from The New Yorkerover the same period. Here you'll find the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill, and the dazzling creations of pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz. Gladwell sits with Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen, as he sells rotisserie ovens, and divines the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer" who can calm savage animals with the touch of his hand. He explores intelligence tests and ethnic profiling and why it was that employers in Silicon Valley once tripped over themselves to hire the same college graduate.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
8mentions
8people
2009–2021years
38% recommend63% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I am planning to buy a few Kindle Books as Amazon as a good sale running, which Books should I buy? I already got the following today:
The Personal MBA: A World-Class Business Education in a Single Volume
All Marketers Are Liars: The Underground Classic That Explains How Marketing Really Works--and Why Authenticity Is the Best Marketing of All
Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think
The Effective Executive (Harperbusiness Essentials)
The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses
The Four Steps to the Epiphany
Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less
What the Dog Saw: and other adventures
Outliers: The Story of Success
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials)
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling GiantsGladwell, Malcolm
- The way to "read" Gladwell is to get the talking-book and have him read it to you as you commute to work/home. He's a great storyteller - in both word and voice. And he delivers his own material extraordinarily well. I've listened to all 3 of the books mentioned and am currently enjoying his collection of NYer essays "What the Dog Saw". His essay on Ron Popeil was terrific. Word of warning though ... you might find yourself sad to arrive at your destination and just sit in the car an extra few mins to finish a section!
- The best book I read in 2009 was The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. It's surprisingly accessible (I've never taken a biology class), and talks a lot about evolutionary game theory which I found fascinating.
Some other books I read last year:
How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker. It was a great book, Pinker's writing is accessible and entertaining. Much more so than On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins.
More with Less: Paul MacCready and the Dream of Efficient Flight by Paul Ciotti. I really enjoyed this one, it was the story of the first team to cross the English channel with human-powered flight.
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. I liked this one better than Gladwell's other books. There is less theorizing and arguing a point and more telling stories, which is what Gladwell excels at.
The Mind's I by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett. If you are patient with what is sometimes (in my humble opinion) pointlessly arguing semantics, some of the sections are interesting.
- Aaah I thought it was reference to 'What the dog saw', which is a Malcom Gladwell book. Seems it's also a reference to that film
- Personal anecdote about a book of his: I had a lunch interview and the CEO winced when I quoted What the Dog Saw, and corrected me using their actual experience running a large corporation. I think about not having to get along with coworkers, and the CEO said that was nonsense.
*No I didn't say I don't get along. They asked what books I was reading
- I'm re-reading Gladwells What the Dog saw, and just came to Million Dollar Murray: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/02/13/million-dollar...
The conclusions to this certainly made sense to me. Were they debunked or forgotten?
