Wednesday, March 26, 2014

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

I finished reading David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcom Galdwell. I bought the book because it enjoyed Galdwell's book Outliers so much! When I read Outliers almost five years ago, it give me a blueprint for trying to help Jack be successful: opportunity and repetition. I have repeated this mantra over and over again.

In this book, Gladwell challenges how we define advantages and disadvantages. He looks at five generalized cases where people excel in spite of the situation. These included: learning disabilities like dyslexia; loss of a parent; big fish in a little pond as it relates to colleges; the power of close misses in the bombing of London during World War II; and results of a culture being persecuted over time, such as the Mennonites and Huguenots.

I enjoyed the book, but I have not yet had the kind of epiphany that I had with Outliers. The two concepts that I am still rolling around in my head are the disadvantages of the most prestigious schools and the idea that children of successful parents are disadvantaged because they didn't face the kind of disadvantages that we faced.

While I gave Outliers an A+, I would give David and Goliath a weak B+. I just don't think that conclusions are as focused as they were in the earlier book.

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