What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures |
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| Title: | What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures |
| Author: | Malcolm Gladwell |
| Publisher: | Little, Brown and Company |
| Type: | Book / Hardcover |
| Publication Date: | 20 October, 2009 |
| ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0316075841 / 9780316075848 |
| List Price: | $27.99 |
| You Save: | $11.62 |
| Amazon Price: | $16.37 |
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Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
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:
• Awesome Collection Of Stories!
16 March, 2010
A great book that has lots of fun stories! An easy book to just pick up and read a quick story. Stories vary on subjects creating a fun mix up of knowledge.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Intriguing
16 March, 2010
What the Dog Saw is simply an intriguing book. I am always one of those pre-order customers when it comes to Gladwell's books.
This book is a compilation of some articles he wrote, but they somehow fit quite nicely in one cover. I read some of them already, and yet it was (again:) intriguing to read them again.
I won't hold you for long, the other reviewers covered more or less everything I would say myself. Check out the preview section of the book, you'll read a paragraph or two and you would certainly want to spend some time with this book. It's worth the investment.
- Amazon Customer Review
• What The Dog Saw
06 March, 2010
There are few authors that I know of that create that "have to read" feeling for me but Malcolm Gladwell is one of them and this book did not disappoint. What the Dog Saw is a collection of Gladwell's articles written in The New Yorker where he has been a staff writer since 1996. What amazes me the most about Gladwell is his ability to take the seemingly mundane, pair it with two or three other seemingly mundane topics, and make the story interesting and relevant while touching on topics that impact our daily lives.
One of the articles that caught my attention was written about the inventor of the birth control pill, John Rock. He was a Catholic man who was deeply concerned about the approval of his church and, due to his concern, created the placebo pills that women are still taking today. The significance of the placebo pill was to prove that this was a natural form of contraception and no different than the most popular method being employed by the Catholic Church at the time. (Sadly, John Rock was eventually excommunicated and lost his faith even after he worked so hard and, at times, seemed to have the approval of many within the Vatican.)
By calling the pill natural Rock proves that there are many things science knows, such as how to stop women from ovulating, and then there are things science won't, or can't, understand until after they have had time to see the long term effects of their actions. Something that is said to be "natural" or "safe", such as birth control pills made from progestin cannot not actually be accurately judged until enough time has passed to clearly prove the truth behind the statement. (Progestin actually increases the chances a woman will have breast cancer.) Gladwell also points out that as family sizes have decreased and the number of times women menstruate has increased from about 100 times in their lifetime to 350 or 400 times, that the possibility of cancer from cell reproduction in that process has also increased the chances of ovarian and breast cancer.
This actually leads me to something in my life that has been weighing on me heavily. Science introduced vaccines in 1798 (smallpox) and has steadily increased the number of vaccines available (and required by schools/states in most cases) ever since. Undoubtedly most doctors who administer vaccines as well as those who research and invent vaccines have society's best interest in mind and then the drug gets shoved down our throats via the government and the special interest money they so eagerly accept. My point of this is I have no idea what is "necessary" for my child and what will only harm them. My book for week 3 is a vaccine book that is not anti vaccine but takes a more cautious approach than that of Paul Offit. (see Wired Magazine article: An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All)
I already have a healthy fear of the unknown and uncontrollable, and it really bothers me that the first choice I have to make on behalf of my child may bring harm. Vaccines are not something that you can easily research because much of the research is paid for by people who have an interest in finding data either for or against them. Also, you can't pick and choose single vaccines because they are combined with a number of other vaccines that, no doubt, I won't want to give. I'll move on.
Among the other articles Gladwell touches on the actual value of an interview, why knowing if someone will be a good teacher is the same as knowing if a great college quarterback will be great in the NFL and the difference between what it is to "choke" and panic.
You can find Gladwell's bio and most recent articles here.
What the Dog Saw is not only worthy of a read but also a purchase as are the other 3 he has written. (The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers)
I hope this finds you well.
~jc
- Amazon Customer Review
• Good Stuff But I'm Not Going To Press It Into People's Hands Like I Do Outliers And Tipping Point
13 March, 2010
I love Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and Outliers. They're outstanding, compelling works. It speaks to how deeply ingrained those works are in the American consciousness to note how easily people inflect their conversations with the terms 'tipping point' and 'outlier'. I'm party to that and I hear it quite a bit from others. And though Gladwell isn't anyone's idea of a narrator from Central Casting, his quirky, breathless, enthusiastic inhabiting of his own words makes the audio version a better option for the complete Gladwellian experience.
I enjoyed this compilation of his works from The New Yorker, but I'm not going to press it into people's hands like I do Outliers and Tipping Point. I liked some of the pieces, got quickly bored with some of the others. If you don't cotton to the subject of a particular piece, you're in for a tough slog because Gladwell's "delightful side excursions" (to quote one of the professional reviewers here) - while thrilling and exciting on subjects you like - can be akin to Chinese water torture on subjects you don't. So, while I listened intently on the Cezanne/Picasso piece and the Cesar Milan piece (just picking examples from my head), I used the 'next track' button on a couple of others. [I did listen to all but two of pieces in their entirety.]
Fans of Malcolm Gladwell owe to themselves to buy this book. Those new to Gladwell should start with Outliers or Tipping Point.
- Amazon Customer Review
• I Love His Previous Three Books. I Dont Like This Collection Of Articles
09 March, 2010
By comparison, his previous three books are much more insightful and well written than this collection of his New Yorker articles, of which many outstanding ideas had been consummated in those books. On the other hand, I must congratulate Gladwell that he had been improving his writing and story telling skill brilliantly over the years. Pity that I realized so with my finding some chapters in it quite boring indeed. In short, I strongly suggest potential readers to try this in a bookstore before they make a purchase. You may thank me for that.
- Amazon Customer Review
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