Take any mundane topic, assign it to New York-based magazine writer Malcolm Gladwell, and likely he will craft a thoughtful, fascinating and insightful essay. That's the magic that fills his book, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures (2009, Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 410 pages).
If too many readers knew in advance that the book deals with seemingly dull topics, like the history of ketchup, the rise of television pitchmen, the social impact of hair dye, the costs of homelessness and the shortfalls of job interviews, its sales might plunge. Handled by Gladwell, such subjects lead in unexpected directions. Alert to fresh angles, he sees hidden implications that almost no one else would notice.
“...women entered the workplace, fought for social emancipation, got the Pill and changed what they did with their hair. To examine the hair-color campaigns of the period is to see, quite unexpectedly, all these things as bound up together, the profound with the seeming trivial. In writing the history of women in the postwar era, did we forget something important? Did we leave out hair?”
When contemplating everyday subjects, Gladwell somehow challenges the assumptions behind world politics and economics. “The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it's the other way around.
“All the pieces in What the Dog Saw come from the pages of The New Yorker, where I have been a staff writer since 1996,” Gladwell said. “Of the countless articles I've written..., these are my favorites.”
The author presents 19 essays in three categories (“minor geniuses” he's met, theories to help explain human experiences and how people observe each other). Two essays involve dogs, one about training them and one pondering if pit bulls should be banned as vicious killers or if they're innocent victims of stereotyping. The book's title comes from the dog-training section. Apparently, people should heed “what the dog saw” or how situations look through canine eyes. No matter how much humans watch dog behavior, the pouches study us much more.
Gladwell poses pertinent questions and tries to pinpoint answers. Are smart people overrated? Could homelessness be easier and cheaper to solve than to tolerate? Why do some people choke and others panic? Since mustard comes in many varieties, why does ketchup never change? Sometimes his reasoning bounces to disparate topics and back again. A discussion of military bombing leads to the shortfalls of mammography. He compares football quarterbacks and school teachers.
Some conclusions prove surprising. “What accidents like the Challenger should teach us is that we have constructed a world in which the potential for high-tech catastrophe is embedded in the fabric of day-to-day life.”
A few fundamental strategies take the author far. For example, “You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.” Equally important, “Curiosity about the interior life of other people's day-to-day work is one of the most fundamental of human impulses.”
Although a profound thinker, Gladwell builds easy-to-grasp arguments. He suggests that many geniuses, especially the late bloomers, may look like failures for a long time. “Sometimes genius is anything but rarefied; sometimes it's just the thing that emerges after 20 years of working at your kitchen table.”
Gladwell wrote three previous books: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference (2000), Blink: the Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), and Outliers: the Story of Success (2008). Not only does he appear regularly on the New York Times bestsellers list, but in 2005, Time magazine named him among its 100 most-influential people.
What the Dog Saw should convince readers that any topic can be worth considering, that everyone has interesting experiences and aspects. Thanks to the author for proving these points above all.
Approval rating: 75 per cent.
For more information: www.penguin.com
(November 10, 2010)
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