What the Dog Saw: Essays - Softcover

Gladwell, Malcolm

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316076325 ISBN 13: 9780316076326

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2009

Synopsis

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 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.

About 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"

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"

"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"

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." Alex Altman, "Time.com""

"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." Alice Evans, "The Oregonian""

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." Alex Altman, "Time.com""

"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." Alice Evans, "The Oregonian""

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."--Alex Altman, Time.com

"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."--Janet Maslin, New York Times

"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."--Steven Pinker, The New York Times Book Review

From the Back Cover:

In these breathtaking intellectual adventure stories, covering everything from criminology to ketchup, job interviews to dog training, Malcolm Gladwell looks under the surface of everyday life to show how the most ordinary subjects can illuminate the most extraordinary things about us and our world.

'Masterpieces in the art of the essay' Steven Pinker, The New York Times

'Beautiful ... brings together the writing that made Gladwell the extraordinary figure he is today ... one of the most imaginative non-fiction writers of his generation' Ian Sample, Guardian

'Chatty, perceptive, impish and amiable ... Comes exuberantly close to ... what goes on inside other people's heads' Philip Womack, Daily Telegraph

'Gladwell makes the world seem fresh and exciting again' Evening Standard

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0316076325
• ISBN 13: 9780316076326
• Binding: Paperback