WHAT THE DOG SAW / Review
“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.
Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for The New Yorker. He was formerly a business and science reporter at the Washington Post.
articles published in The New Yorker,
where he has been on staff since 1996.
In the preface, Gladwell explains that he has grouped
the articles into three categories.
They are:
Part One – Obsessives, Pioneers, and Other Varieties of Minor Genius
Part Two – Therories, Predictions, and Diagnoses
Part Three – Personality, Character, and Intelligence
Here are a few interesting tidbits of information,
that I gleaned from each of the groups.
A – Ketchup is a nineteenth-century creation,
and the original was a more watery concoction than what we use today.
B – Over an 18 month period, 15 “chronically homeless individuals”
visited the emergency room,
at The University of California, San Diego Medical Center,
417 times. They ran up bills that averaged $100,000 each.
One of them showed up 87 times!
C – All quarterbacks drafted into the pros are required to
take an IQ test called The Wonderlic Personnel Test.
From the story of Ron Popeil
to the crime ranking of New York City
(on a list of 240 cities with a population of a hundred thousand or more…)
What The Dog Saw, was an enjoyable and informative read.