Showing posts with label Essay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Essay. Show all posts

What the Dog Saw: and other adventures by Malcolm Gladwell (2009)

, 6 Oct 2014


Gladwell has the rare virtue of writing about mundane things with easiness, a sense of entertainment, but with an inquisitive mind. Characters, situations or historical episodes that would pass unnoticed to most of us, don't pass unnoticed to Gladwell, who is able to see underneath the surface, connect the dots, and look at things in revealing thoughtful ways.

The collection of articles in this book (originally published in the New York times) are a perfect example of this. There a few articles on business-related subjects, but I especially loved the articles related to women, especially the ones on hair dying in Post-War America, the one on the birth control pill, and the one on mammography imaging, which are simply terrific.

This is one of those books that reads well when travelling - it feeds your mind without feeling you full or heavy.