What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures |  | Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Category: Book
List Price: $27.99
Buy New: $16.14
as of 3/9/2010 11:12 CST details
New (52) Used (26) Collectible (2) from $15.00
Seller: cenallbooks
Rating:  103 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 432
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.8 x 1.4
ISBN: 0316075841
Dewey Decimal Number: 814.6
EAN: 9780316075848
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780316075848 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
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 TheNew 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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 103
 Wow, what a surpirsing gem! November 24, 2009
M. Strong (Milwaukee, WI USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I've enjoyed all of Malcolm Gladwell's single-subject books, so I thought I'd give this collection of his articles a chance even though I often find compilations like this to be a let down. I'm positively thrilled I read it. The only drawback may be that my friends and family must be sick to death of listening to me talk about it.
A number of things make the book a real standout. The first is Gladwell's own description of what he tries to accomplish when he writes an article. He says he tries to give the reader a sense of "what it feels like" to be the person he's featuring. He does it in spades and throws a lot more into the bargain as well.
Amongst the articles, I found a clearer and more engaging explanation of Nassim Taleb's theories than can be found in Taleb's own books. They are brilliant and fascinating and literally gave me new ideas on how to deal with today's stock market conditions. I came to understand why French's mustard has hundreds of successful competitors while Heinz ketchup really has none. I learned better ways to interact with my dog. The list goes on and on.
What's so fun is that each article took me into a world different from my own and when I left, I had more than I came in with. Some of it is truly helpful in my life, some will make great cocktail party conversation and some is just fascinating in its own right.
Pick this one up and give it a read. I think you'll be glad you did.
Like a provocative comedian, Gladwell chooses familiar rocks November 20, 2009
D. Gaston (Chicago, IL)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Gladwell's subject matter is intentionally, wildly far flung. In addition, one story will go micro and the next will go macro. He revels in the swing. Like a provocative comedian, Gladwell chooses familiar rocks and then breaks them open for the pay off. He exposes the human motivations and the surrounding group dynamics that contribute to any number of calamities. As a premier American Social Scientist, Gladwell is many things; part intuitive savant, part psychologist and sociologist and part investigative interrogator. Above all these gifts, Gladwell is an excellent story teller. He often tackles huge and complex topics with simple unflappable logic. Gladwell's patented "reveal" is his franchise trademark. First he presents an interesting dynamic or problem. He then presents a second, seemingly unrelated problem. Gladwell toggles between the two stories and rolls them out on two long converging lines, logically inching them forward, step-by-step. At the end of each essay, there is a single resolve with an implicit social commentary, (`... the teacher's have an NFL quarterback problem"). He often concedes that knowing the logical answer won't necessarily change the next inevitable outcome. So rest assured, due to our own human nature, curious Mr. Gladwell will never run short of flamboyant material.
More Interesting & Unique Perspectives November 15, 2009
Larry Underwood (Scottsdale, AZ)
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
If you're an avid reader of "The New Yorker" over the past decade or so, you probably would've read most of the stories Malcolm Gladwell pieced together to produce this fascinating book; perhaps you would've felt cheated that he's simply rehashing old stuff.
Luckily for me, I don't read "The New Yorker", so all of Gladwell's "adventures" that have been compiled for this endeavor are new to me; and I found them to be quite interesting and unique. The end result is a book that anyone with an inquiring mind would certainly enjoy. I loved it.
The topics covered in this quirky series of essays are as far-flung as Ron Popeil and the psychology of dogs; whether you find each one to be of interest is debatable. Certainly, what some people would find interesting, would bore others to death. To nit pick each separate chapter would be a futile endeavor; simply enjoy the essence of Gladwell's engaging prose, and explore the fascinating perspective he lends to our crazy existence.
In the end, you'll discover a different perspective on a lot of things you never even thought about before; and isn't that the reason for expanding our intellectual horizons? Quite simply, this book accomplishes its mission; I highly recommend reading it for yourself.
Everyone & Everything Has A Story To Tell December 10, 2009
Susan Donlon
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
"But what if we look at that problem through someone else's eyes, from inside someone else's head?" writes Malcolm Gladwell in his collection of chosen New Yorker magazine articles. Malcolm has certainly succeeded in writing another entertaining and thought provoking book that inspires the reader to look outside their own world and satisfy their curiosity of how others live and work. Curiosities of how people think, day in, day out, in all types of occupations lead us to inventions like the ez squirt Heinz ketchup bottle! Simple, yet amazingly brilliant!
Another book I highly recommend is called "Working on Yourself Doesn't Work: The 3 Simple Ideas That Will Instantaneously Transform Your Life" by Ariel & Shya Kane. Their ideas showed me ways to create and maintain a life worth living with satisfaction and meaning. Good news is you can also hear the Kanes on their radio show titled "Being Here".
Pick up either book for entertainment but trust me - you will also find inspiration and awe for the wonders of the world you live in and of which you are a part.
Thought Provoking November 24, 2009
Nikon Fan (Kailua, HI USA)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I enjoyed "Outliers" so I ordered the book on disk version of WTDS. Maybe it's my short attention span, but I actually enjoyed WTDS more. Comparing the two books, Outliers is closer to a dissertation while WTDS is more like a collection of masters theses. Even when he's discussing topics I didn't think would be of special interest to me, Gladwell manages to construct interesting and thought-provoking connections.
He freely admits (as he did on an unfortunate appearance on Stephen Colbert's show) that he isn't trying to convert the reader, only to engage the reader in thought. This is a pleasant change from the constant barrage of views from the talking heads on cable television and talk radio.
Both Outliers and WTDS had defective portions in the CDs -- not bad enough to return them, but enough to remind one that the disk production was done by the lowest bidder.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 103
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