What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures [Hardcover]

Malcolm Gladwell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 2009

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 20^th 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 Yorker over the same period.

Here is the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill, and the dazzling inventions of the 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 "hindsight bias" and why it was that everyone in Silicon Valley once tripped over themselves to hire the same college graduate.

"Good writing," Gladwell says in his preface, "does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head." What the Dog Saw is yet another example of the buoyant spirit and unflagging curiosity that have made Malcolm Gladwell our most brilliant investigator of the hidden extraordinary.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gladwell's fourth book comprises various contributions to the New Yorker and makes for an intriguing and often hilarious look at the hidden extraordinary. He wonders what... hair dye tell[s] us about twentieth century history, and observes firsthand dog whisperer Cesar Millan's uncanny ability to understand and be understood by his pack. Gladwell pulls double duty as author and narrator; while his delivery isn't the most dramatic or commanding, the material is frequently astonishing, and his reading is clear, heartfelt, and makes for genuinely pleasurable listening. A Little, Brown hardcover. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

GREAT PRAISE FOR WHAT THE DOG SAW:

"[Malcolm Gladwell] is one of the brightest stars in the media firmament...Gladwell's clear prose and knack for upending conventional wisdom across the social sciences have made The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers, as well as his lengthy magazine features on topics ranging from cool-hunting to ketchup, into must reads." (Time.com Alex Altman )

"This evidence of a Gladwell effect helps to predict something larger: that Mr. Gladwell's new book will be as successful as his first three...This book full of short conversation pieces is a collection that plays to the author's strengths. It underscores his way of finding suitably quirky subjects (the history of women's hair-dye advertisements; the secret of Heinz's unbeatable ketchup; even the effects of women's changing career patterns on the number of menstrual periods they experience in their lifetimes) and using each as gateway to some larger meaning." (New York Times Janet Maslin )

"Gladwell is a writer of many gifts. His nose for the untold back story will have readers repeatedly muttering, "Gee, that's interesting!" He avoids shopworn topics, easy moralization and conventional wisdom, encouraging his readers to think again and think different...Some chapters are masterpieces in the art of the essay." (The New York Times Book Review Steven Pinker )

"Uniformly delightful...Malcolm Gladwell can write engrossingly about just about anything...His witty, probing articles are as essential to David Remnick's New Yorker as those of Wolcott Gibbs and A.J. Liebling were to Harold Ross's...Gladwell has a gift for capturing personalities, a Borscht Belt comic's feel for timing and a bent for counterintuitive thinking. He loves to start a piece by settling you onto a cushion of received ideas, then yanking it out from under you."- (Bloomberg News Craig Seligman )

"Malcolm Gladwell triumphantly returns to his roots with this collections of his great works from The New Yorker Magazine....Do yourself a favor and curl up with What the Dog Saw this week: It is more entertaining and edifying than should be legal for any book." (Louisville Courier-Journal Scott Coffman )

"In What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell leads the reader on delightful side excursions, shows with insightful conversation how one path interweaves with another, and suggests meaning-he is, in short, an interpretative naturalist of American culture." (The Oregonian Alice Evans )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 410 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (October 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316075841
• ISBN-13: 978-0316075848
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.5 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (220 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #49 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Essays

More About the Author

Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer with The New Yorker magazine since 1996. His 1999 profile of Ron Popeil won a National Magazine Award, and in 2005 he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. He is the author of "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference," (2000) and "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" (2005), both of which were number one New York Times bestsellers.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

337 of 348 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "A unique perspective on the complexity of the human mind.", October 20, 2009

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (Hardcover)

Malcolm Gladwell's "What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures" is a compilation of the author's favorite work from The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1996. This book is divided into three parts 1. Obsessives, Pioneers, and Other Varieties of Minor Genius 2. Theories, Predictions, and Diagnoses 3. Personality, Character, and Intelligence. In the first part, Gladwell includes portraits of a pitchman for kitchen gadgets who is so persuasive that he could sell clothing to a nudist. In addition, he discusses three female advertising pioneers, a canny investment strategist, and a "dog whisperer" who is able to tame even the most intransigent canine. What these people have in common is an understanding of how human beings (and four-legged creatures) think and feel, supreme self-confidence, and the ability to promote themselves and their ideas. The second part deals with the art of thinking and seeing clearly. Gladwell describes the series of events that led to the Challenger explosion and the collapse of Enron. Could these catastrophic events have been foreseen and prevented? In part three, the author discusses various aspects of genius and talent, and whether it is possible to profile criminal behavior or predict how a prospective employee will fare on the job.

"What the Dog Saw" has some intriguing passages that will impel readers to say, "I never thought of this subject in quite that way before." The provocative Gladwell enjoys toying with conventional wisdom and challenging our preconceived notions. For instance, in one article, he defends certain forms of plagiarism, a transgression that many would consider indefensible. In another, he states that tragedies such as the Challenger disaster are unavoidable, since for a variety of reasons, "we don't really want the safest of all possible worlds." This water-cooler book will have people arguing vehemently that Malcolm Gladwell is either out of his mind or, conversely, that he is a courageously honest writer who dares to tell it like it is.

Unfortunately, there are several dreary chapters, including one that analyzes why one particular brand of ketchup is so popular and another that explores the poor judgment of John Rock, the inventor of the birth control pill. In addition, Gladwell occasionally indulges in hair-splitting: Do most of us really care about the fine distinctions between panicking and choking? On the other hand, there is a fascinating section that explains why mammograms, as a diagnostic tool, are inexact and hard to interpret. In addition, Gladwell makes a good case for the notion that intelligence failures, such as the ones that preceded 9/11, are easy to condemn in hindsight but may be more understandable when viewed in context. Malcolm Gladwell's strength has always been his ability to tell an original and entertaining story and connect it to our everyday experiences. He does just that in his best pieces, but there are others that probably should not have made the cut.

327 of 339 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you don't need the actual physical book..., November 16, 2009

By 

Oy!-dysseus - See all my reviews

This review is from: What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (Hardcover)

Not a review so much as a notice. If you don't need the actual book itself, you should know that all of these pieces are available on Malcolm Gladwell's website for free.

170 of 195 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Don't bother - a collection of articles, November 30, 2009

By 

BTrain (Pioneer Square) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (Hardcover)

I'm a big fan of Gladwell's previous three books and how each of them took an idea and fully developed it over the course of a book. Admittedly the books were small, but that makes sense because I don't think you could write another 100 pages or so on any of those topics and keep the books as interesting to read as they were. When I saw a new book by Malcolm Gladwell out I jumped on it and went ahead and ordered it without even looking at a description of the book. Shame on me for granting Gladwell the status of having anything bought site-unseen. This book is merely a collection of previously published articles written for the new Yorker magazine. As articles they lack the depth and level of development seen in his previous books. Articles seem to be just that, magazine articles covering one subject rather than trying to take one idea and really expand upon it and explore it in depth. Yes, the articles are organized into an attempt to tie them more together into what the subject matter they are covering but that feels forced and like it was the little work the publisher had Gladwell do in putting this book together before they could print it and sell it to you.

Buy it if you don't get the New Yorker and don't really care that it isn't anything new or very similar to his previous books.
Don't buy it if you can wait for the paperback, or have already read his articles in the New Yorker, or are thinking this will be something like his previous books.