Malcolm Gladwell, the New Yorker writer and perennial best-selling author, has a new book out. It's called David and Goliath: Misfits, Underdogs, and the Art of Battling Giants. I reviewed it on Sept. 28 in The Wall Street Journal. (Other reviews have appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Millions, and Slate, to name a few; the Guardian has even “digested” the book into a 600-word satire.) The WSJ editors kindly gave me about 2,500 words to go into depth about the book, but there were many things I could not discuss or elaborate on. So here are some additional thoughts about Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath, the general modus operandi of his writing, and how he and others conceive of what he is doing.
