A Brilliant mind misses the mark

Jul 05, 2015 Book Review…, Features / Columnists

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Book: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Review: Glenville Ashby Literary Reviewers

“The powerful are not as powerful as they seem – nor the weak as weak,”ý argues Malcolm Gladwell in his new book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants. As in his previous books, Mr. Gladwell has chosen an interesting premise and supports it with fascinating real-life case studies.  However, many of the case studies here do not stand rigorous testing. The end product ultimately suffers from lack of clarity and cohesion
The book begins, appropriately enough, with a study of the famous battle between David and Goliath. Those not familiar with the real facts behind this battle will be intrigued to learn that the mighty Goliath was no match for David for a variety of reasons, not least because he suffered from a medical condition that severely restricted his sight and caused double vision.
Gladwell hypothesizes that ”while having material resources is an advantage, having an absence of resources can also be an advantage,” because the underdog is hungrier and willing to change the rules of the game.  David would have lost in hand to hand combat, so he changed the rules by attacking Goliath from a distance with his slingshot.
In another case study, an underdog basketball team of 12-year-old girls beat much more talented teams and went on to the National Championships by using a little-used but highly effective strategy called the full court press. Lawrence of Arabia led an unruly, ragtag group of Bedouin Arabs to defeat the mighty Turkish army by using a guerilla strategy of attacking the Turks where they least expected it. Martin Luther King Jr. scored a major public relations win over Eugene ‘Bull’ O’Connor, the deeply racist Public Safety Commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama. He did so by using thousands of children to march in protest, leading to their arrest and a huge national uproar.
Further, Gladwell explores dyslexia: “You wouldn’t wish dyslexia on your child. Or would you?” But, according to a suspect study cited by the author, somewhere around a third of all successful entrepreneurs are dyslexics.  David Boies, the uber-lawyer, developed excellent listening skills to compensate for his dyslexia, while Brian Grazer, another dyslexic, developed excellent negotiating skills to achieve great success in Hollywood.  Gladwell attributes their accomplishments entirely to dyslexia, which seems to oversimplify all the variables that go into making anyone a success.
Midway through the book, he introduces a new idea: more can be less.  He uses the concept of an inverted U-curve to illustrate that sometimes more resources can lead to diminishing results.  For example, ýalthough conventional wisdom holds that low classroom size is desirable, lowering the class size to below a certain number can actually depress the learning experience.  And getting into a top college can sometimes hurt a student’s chances of success – acceptance into a second choice good school might have been better.  A very tough three-strikes law to deter criminals from becoming repeat offenders actually ends up having the opposite effect.  And ýoverwhelming use of force by the British army in Northern Ireland does not suppress the Irish insurgency, but actually helps it become stronger.
Perhaps the most poignant and controversial idea in the book is that losing a parent early on in life can be an advantage for certain people. But first, Gladwell introduces the concept of ‘remote misses’ – a term coined by a Canadian psychiatrist.
During the German blitz of London in WWII, almost 90,000 people were injured or killed, but the people of London did not panic. The reason for this is that the millions of people who heard the bombs detonate but were not directly affected by the bombing, developed an air of invincibility…what does not kill me makes me stronger.  These millions were what the psychiatrist termed “remote misses”.  Similarly, certain children who experienced the loss of a parent at an early age suffer unspeakable trauma in their childhood, but can come out stronger from the experience and can go on to lead a life of great accomplishment.
Gladwell cites a psychologist named Marvin Eisenstadt:  ”Of the 573 eminent people for whom Eisenstadt could find reliable information, a quarter had lost at least one parent before the age of ten.” Gladwell uses the example of Emil ‘Jay’ Freireich, a doctor who fought great odds to achieve success against Leukemia.  Freireich was tough, resilient, and unafraid of ruffling feathers – the implication is that losing a parent in early childhood was so frightening that nothing much frightened Freireich later on in life.
However, Gladwell acknowledges that “prisoners are somewhere between two and three times more likely to have lost a parent in childhood than the population as a whole.”ý Gladwell does not offer a theory on what makes one person self-destruct while another goes on to great success – the randomness makes the entire chapter seems pointless.
In later chapters, there are examples of a grieving mother and forgiveness, and a Huguenot pastor who helped Jews escape from persecution during the War in 1940.  These examples drift farther and farther away from the supposed thesis of the book.
To summarize, “David and Goliath” is a book of ideas. Too many ideas, as it turns out:ý The mighty are not as powerful as they seem; an absence of resources can actually be an advantage; more resources can sometimes lead to diminishing results; dyslexia can actually lead to success in life; losing one’s parent at an early age can sometimes result in a life of great accomplishment. And so on.
Mr. Gladwell uses his considerable writing skills to cut back and forth between his case studies, but ultimately fails to prove his argument.  His case studies feature some inspiring characters, but in many cases the stories oversimplify cause and effect, and don’t carry substantive weight. At best, Mr. Gladwell has presented some intriguing hypotheses about what makes human beings tick, but there is little to learn about life’s complexities.
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell (2013)
Little, Brown and Company, NYC
ISBN978-0-316-20436-1
Available: Barnes and Noble/Amazon.com
Rating: Good

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