David and Goliath (BOOK REVIEW)
David and Goliath
Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
by Malcolm Gladwell
Little, Brown and Company
Hardcover, $29.00
320 pages
ISBN: 978-0-316-20436-1
Book
Review by Kam Williams
“Three
thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty
warrior with nothing more than a stone and a sling, and ever since then, the
names David and Goliath have stood for battles between underdogs and giants.
David’s victory was improbable and miraculous. He shouldn’t have won.
In
David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell challenges how we think about obstacles and
disadvantages, offering a new interpretation of what it means to be
discriminated against, or cope with a disability, or lose a parent, or attend a
mediocre school, or suffer from any number of other apparent setbacks.”
--
Excerpted from the Inside Book Jacket
In best-sellers
like “Blink,” “Outliers” and “The Tipping Point,” Malcolm Gladwell has proven
himself quite adept at breaking down complex psychological, scientific and
political concepts in such a way that they are readily digestible for mass
consumption. This popular public intellectual and veritable man of the people has
done it again with “David and Goliath,” an earnest examination of why so many manage
to flourish in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.
He opens
with a discussion of the classic showdown from which the opus borrows its Biblical
title. There, he suggests that, contrary to legend, diminutive David might not
really have been at a disadvantage to the giant Philistine at all. For, the
author points out that even a muscle-bound soldier armed with a sword and a
shield would probably still be no match for a civilian skilled at hurling rocks
with a sling from a safe distance.
The balance
of the book is basically an exploration of illustrative examples of the
triumphs of real-life underdogs in supposedly lopsided conflicts. Again and
again, in case studies ranging from the African-American fight for civil rights
in the segregated South to the Irish Catholic struggle for freedom from the British,
we learn that military might was no predictor of the eventual outcome.
Gladwell
also relates the triumphs of several successful individuals as further proof of
his central thesis, such as dyslexic David Boies who became one of the country’s
leading lawyers, and orphaned Emil Jay Freireich who grew up to become a top
medical doctor.
Persuasive,
if counterintuitive, food for thought surmising that a child might be better
off having to surmount a considerable life challenge rather than being born with a
silver spoon in his or her mouth.
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