Tipping point, blink and outliers
Malcolm Gladwell
In reference to my previous blog where I explained that my wife calls books such as this written by “happy people”. Gladwell is one of the happiest people of the lot. Very much in the vain of Dan Pink who I blogged about earlier in the year, Gladwell’s books are inspiring and will change the way you view the world in such a positive way as they must be read by everyone.
Gladwell has the ability to sprinkle his magic dust over any subject and encourage the reader to view it from a different angle to have a greater understanding.
His books are simply fascinating, un-putdown able, inspirational reads and he covers many, many subjects.
In tipping point he explains the mechanisms of a social epidemic and how something “goes viral” from hush puppies shoes to syphilis and many other topics. It is an amazing examination of human behavior and it will change the way you look at the world.
In outliers, he looks at statistical outliers and talent and explains and blows apart many pre-conceived notions of things that you thought were set in stone but realise are not set in stone at all. He examined, for example, why ice-hockey players in America were all born in the first 3 months of the year and how this relates to the way children are brought up in Canada. He looks at terrible plane crashes and cultural phenomena which lead to such things and just provides such an interesting read that it is impossible to stop.
Blink is the best of the lot, I think, talking about unconscious thought and everything that goes with it from speed dating to temporary autism in police officers which leads them to shoot individuals after police chases.
Gladwell is a long-term journalist who has won many prizes for his work but I guess one of the most interesting parts of the book in Blink was where her underwent a test at Harvard University to assess him fro racism. On completion of the test, where it classified him as a racist, he insisted to be re-tested. He was re-tested several times and each time the result was the same. Gladwell was horrified and very disappointed particularly in the view that his mother his black and himself mixed-race. He was stunned to find out and then to write about the fact that in the United States today, due to the culture even the mixed race individuals are bigoted towards the black people.
Read the book.
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