Review: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Malcolm loaded his gun. He took aim and fired. Nine shots rang out and echoed through the valley. After the smoke cleared, he walked forward to see the damage he had done. There were nine bullet holes in the bright, red side of a barn, and they formed the shape of a great big, inverted-U curve. Like this: ∩.

Then Malcolm picked up a paintbrush from a can of white paint that was sitting by the barn, and around each bullet hole, he drew a circle, around a circle, around a circle. With another brush, in the middle of each circle, he painted a yellow bullseye. “Done,” he said. “Nine perfect shots!”

Painting a bullseye around a shot already fired is called the “Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy,” and critics accuse author Malcolm Gladwell of doing this in his book “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.”

Gladwell is famous for translating the social sciences into adventure tales, but Christopher Chabris, and other critics, make Gladwell infamous, saying that he overstates claims. They say he may hit the bullseye with his essay and storytelling skills, but not with his science. I want to disagree with the critics, but up to a point, they have a point.

Gladwell is one of the top writers of non-fiction in the English speaking world, so why do critics shred up the top guy in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and two times in the New York Times? If you search, you may have trouble finding a positive review of David and Goliath.

But people love Malcolm Gladwell because he doesn’t just popularize social science. He sets it in memorable and compelling narratives (stories) that come to life. He makes social science feel like a series of conflicts that we experience, showing us subtle and deeper shades of meaning in life.

Contrast this with many academics. They lard their prose with obese nominalizations, with 15-word subjects of sentences, with no actors who act, and with no story to compel the mind. If we read them, it’s hard work, not just because the content is demanding, but also because the prose is poorly written.

But Gladwell writes to put the reader in a state of flow. He takes the dry data and logic chopping of academic discourse and spins it into a story that we can’t put down. And just what is the story of David and Goliath? The strong have weaknesses that come from their strengths, and the weak can become strong because of their weaknesses. Power can produce vulnerabilities, and weakness can contain the seeds of strength.

For example, Gladwell summarizes research that says there are a high percentage of dyslexics who are successful in business, and he concludes that they succeeded not because dyslexia is good, but because it was an obstacle that made them work harder.

This seems true enough, but Gladwell also says that there are an overwhelming number of dyslexics in prison. This does not refute his argument, but it places a condition around it, and so on this point, Gladwell shows he is careful enough to hedge his claim.

In fact, he never tries to convince us through emotion, but he may need to state his claims more in the language of probabilities and tendencies. This is important because readers may get lost in the stories he tells and forget that stories do not always represent the overall pattern of reality.

Of course Gladwell tells these stories because he wants to show that they do represent the patterns in the real world. Take the pattern of the inverted-U curve. Being bigger, smaller, richer, or stronger is only better up to a certain point. For example, Gladwell says, “Wealth contains the seeds of its own destruction.”

With hard work, a man may become rich, but once he is rich, he will have trouble teaching his children the value of money, so parenting becomes harder after a certain point. This is true. Just look at Paris Hilton! She is an inverted-U curve.

This is my example, not Gladwell’s, and Paris Hilton may look like a social parasite living for a party (that represents a pattern), but in reality she, or someone just like her, may be a wonderful person who makes tremendous contributions to society. My speculation and subsequent generalization about her may be wrong.

And generalizing is the problem. David and Goliath is filled with factual and historical storytelling that is informative and inspiring. However, Gladwell must often speculate and generalize when he makes conclusions from these stories or when he extrapolates data from research into these stories.

But how do we know when speculation becomes over-speculation? How do we know when it is hedged, balanced, and constrained enough by data? How do we know when the patterns are real? For most of us, these questions may be too difficult to answer.

This is Steven Pinker’s main problem with Gladwell’s previous work. The writing is brilliant, but we should “watch out” for the over generalizations, which may be misleading or wrong. Gladwell says that his readers know better, but we may actually need a social scientist to research whether we know better or not!

Certainly, through Gladwell’s books, we are faced with the problem of knowledge. He does not appear to be a post-modernist who denies the possibility of knowing anything real (as Chabris wrongly suggests). Gladwell is surely a realist, who believes in a real world that we can know about.

However, Gladwell might do better to become more of a critical realist who believes that we can know about a real world, but who also realizes that knowledge is conditioned by filters. We filter knowledge of reality through our cultural and historical place in the world, through the limitations of cognition and language. We know the real world as but a reflection.

After all Gladwell’s stories, we are left with questions about how to interpret the rules, laws, and patterns that purportedly emerge from the stories (and data). At worst, we may be mislead by our lack of knowledge and critical thinking skills. But at best, I think we can rest assured that these stories are indeed true, at least partly and sometimes so.

View all my reviews

Review: Hop on Pop

Hop on Pop
Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My father read this to me when I was little. I loved it.

Looking on the way it is put together, it seems like a master-work of kid’s lit. The illustrations surprise you and grab your interest. The amazon review says that they are “wild and wonderful.”

And there is just enough text on each page. The text is not only perfectly balanced with the illustrations, but the sounds and syllables are minimalist, almost like haiku. The Amazon review says the text is “simple and delightfully silly.”

Whether you like phonics or not, this book is also good for language learners, and I will definitely share it with my students. So they don’t feel “talked down to,” I’ll tell them it’s a classic, and that my father read it to me. They can look at it as a historically significant children’s book if they want, but I hope they just enjoy it for what it is — a fun, silly, and whimsical book.

View all my reviews

Review: The Magic Ukulele

The Magic Ukulele
The Magic Ukulele by Dr. Carolan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a great little book that introduces the ukulele to children. It is beautifully illustrated, and the story is written in rhyme, like a song. The book comes with an audio CD with narration by Roy Sakuma, a premier ukulele teacher in Hawaii. Sakuma is accompanied by award winning musician Ken Emerson. The book comes with clever chord charts, which are color-coded to the fretboard and the fingers, and there’s an appendix in the back, that gives a simple background and history of the ukulele in Hawaii. If you want to inspire children of any age to start the ukulele, this is a perfect choice!

View all my reviews

Old Jews Telling Jokes

Old Jews Telling Jokes: 5,000 Years of Funny Bits and Not-So-Kosher Laughs
Old Jews Telling Jokes: 5,000 Years of Funny Bits and Not-So-Kosher Laughs by Sam Hoffman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When she was a little girl, my grandmother Esther Ruth emigrated from Russia, escaping pogroms with her family, and settling in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She learned English anyway she could, even picking up gum wrappers off the street to read them.

In her eighties, she moved into a house on her son’s property, and I had the privilege of living with her for two years. We went to synagogue together (sometimes), read the Psalms together (a lot), and ate her potato pancakes together (too often).

Esther taught me a Jewish sensibility and sense of humor by the way she talked to me. One day, when we were eating potato pancakes, she looked up on the wall where she had hung portraits of the composers Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner.

Don’t ask why Wagner’s portrait hung there since he was no fan of the Jews. But anyway, Grandma pointed to the pictures on the wall and said, “Joey, why can’t you be like one of them?” The best I could say was “I’ll do my best.” But what I should have said was, “You want me to be like Wagner?!”

Her comment was typical of Jewish grandmothers and mothers. On another day, we had just finished a potato pancake breakfast, and I was late for church (where I worked on the staff, helping with the music). For some reason, we got into a heated argument, and I stormed out of the house, slamming the door of her thin-walled motor home on the way out.

When I reached my car, I was overcome with guilt, and I went back to apologize to my grandmother. When I opened the door, I saw her standing there, slightly hunched over in her dark pink bathrobe, and holding a clock that had fallen off the wall.

The clock must have gone crackers because the second hand was spinning and whizzing around and around really fast. I swallowed my pride and spoke, “Grandma, I’m really sorry.” She looked me in the eye, held up the crazy clock and said, “Joey, you’re such a good Christian.”

On yet another day, the table was set for a big feast with the whole family. Esther sat down before everyone else and waited. After waiting and waiting and twiddling her thumbs, she finally looked at her empty plate and said, “Look what they give me!”

Maybe she wanted some potato pancakes.

This “look what they give me” line is now a standard joke in our family, whenever we remember the life of our dear Esther or whenever something doesn’t live up to our expectations. Understanding such expectations and the kind of pressure (and guilt trips) that Jewish mothers put on their children and grandchildren will help readers appreciate the book “Old Jews Telling Jokes.”

But you don’t need to be Jewish or have a Jewish sense of humor to laugh at the jokes in this book. I bought the ebook and the audio book versions. And I’m sure some people laughed at me as I laughed out loud while jogging with the audio version. And as I retold some of the jokes from the ebook (and from memory), my Japanese friends and family laughed with me (or at me).

So yes, this book promises many good laughs, some of them clean, but be forewarned; it also carries many offenses. There are many ribald and risqué jokes in this book (maybe too many). And you might not want your mother to hear you laugh and look over your shoulder and say, “Darling, why can’t you enjoy good, clean jokes like all the other people in the world?”

View all my reviews

The Proof of Story

Story Proof by Kendall Haven

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Story Proof is a great book, deserving to be read by masses of people. . . ”

Story Proof by Kendall HavenTea time was over. I looked out the window of the common room down on Buccleuch Street. The sky, streets, and buildings of Edinburgh were gray again like the clouds. Then Simon spoke up, “Back to work boys!” One by one we stood up and shuffled for the door. As we headed out, I spoke to my professor. I had to get something off my chest. “Jim,” I said, “I’m having a hard time. . . getting my head around the book you asked me to read.”

I waited a bit anxiously for his response. He looked at me, smiled, and said, “Well, reading a book sometimes is like hitting yourself over the head with a book.” I laughed and promised that I would keep trying. The material was complex and new to me, but it also was dull and poorly written. Besides learning about communication theory, I was learning that some of the brightest academics in the world are bad writers.

Joseph Williams’ great book, “Style: Toward Clarity and Grace” tells us in clear and almost scientific terms what makes for bad writing and how we can improve it. The clear and graceful style tightly defined by Williams actually decreases stress placed on short-term memory, thus helping us parse sentences more easily. Any writer, especially academics, can benefit greatly from the sage advice of Joseph Williams.

But style, clarity, and grace may not be enough. What is missing? According to Kendall Haven, story is missing, and Haven’s book, “Story Proof” convincingly demonstrates that story is the essential element of good writing. And this is not just for fiction. Haven claims that we can “storify” expository prose, arguments, and scientific discourse. And by so doing, we can make our writing more interesting and more memorable.

Unfortunately, the main problem with “Story Proof” is that it is not storified, so reading it may be a little bit like hitting yourself over your head. But to be fair, I’m sure that Haven intentionally did not storify “Story Proof,” and he says that we don’t need to storify all the information we present, but I’m just saying. . . perhaps the book could have benefited from more storification.

In spite of this problem, “Story Proof” rocks because story rocks, and Haven shows us why. He presents abundant research that shows we are hardwired to think in stories. Our brains are designed to make sense and remember information through stories.

Haven claims that the scientific proof for story is overwhelming and uncontested, and I think he is correct. But on my first reading, I felt sometimes lost in a mighty load of story proof that didn’t seem to always fit into to long and coherent argument. Actually, it may, but either that argument needs more coherence, or I need to read it again and find it.

In spite of this whiny complaint, “Story Proof” is still a great book, and it deserves to be read by masses of people, academics (especially academics), but also school teachers, business people, and public speakers. The more people who read this book and apply its ideas, the the less we will hear snoring in classrooms and boardrooms, and the more people will remember and enjoy the information they hear.

For me, Kendall Haven’s biggest contribution is his rigorous definition of story. He delineates 8 elements of story, and claims that when we vary these elements when presenting information, we can predict differential recall and understanding in our listeners. Haven’s definition of story is a good one, and it fits with definitions given by other authors such as Jonathan Gottschall who in “The Storytelling Animal” defines story as “Character + Predicament + Attempted Extrication.”

Here are Haven’s eight essential elements of story. A good story has (1) a main character, who has (2) character traits, that make her compelling. The character (3) acts to reach a goal and (4) possesses a motive for why that goal is important. As the character acts to reach that goal, she faces (5) conflicts and problems that block her, and these conflicts and problems create (6) risks and dangers. As she acts to overcome conflicts, problems, risks, and dangers, she (7) struggles to reach her goal, and all this happens in the context of (8) sensory details that make the story feel real.

Other traits could be added to this definition. For example, we could make a distinction between the internal and external conflicts that a character faces in great stories, and we could talk about the main character’s fatal flaw, which she must overcome in order to reach her goal. For example, in the near perfect film “Flight” directed by Robert Zemeckis, the main character, “Whip,” (played by Denzel Washington) has serious personal internal conflicts and flaws that he must overcome, and these internal issues hook viewers making us root for Whip.

But despite these issues, “Story Proof” is an invaluable book, and it is unique in that perhaps more than any other book in the world, it subsumes a vast amount of research related to the power of story. It’s reference list alone is a valuable resource, (which could be improved if page numbers were given with the quotations). But for anyone interested in the power of story, for anyone wanting to improve their own story-telling, and for any scholar who wants to research the power of story and become a better writer, “Story Proof” is an outstanding resource.

View all my reviews