For those of you that haven't or couldn't attend book club lately, we'll be publishing the previous months' discussion questions here. I hope eventually to post discussion questions for all of the books we've covered since I took over a couple of years ago and beyond, all the way to the beginning over a decade and a half ago. It will take a while. Until then, we will be posting discussion questions on a weekly basis. Here are the questions from a 2010 title, What the Dog Saw. We hope these questions spark discussions of your own.
What the Dog Saw
by Malcolm Gladwell
Summary:
The bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia focuses on "minor geniuses" and idiosyncratic behavior to illuminate the ways all of us organize experience in this "delightful" (Bloomberg News) collection of writings from The New Yorker.
What is the difference between choking and panicking? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard-but only one variety of ketchup? What do football players teach us about how to hire teachers? What does hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century?
In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books that have radically changed how we understand our world and ourselves: The Tipping Point; Blink; and Outliers. Now, in What the Dog Saw, he brings together, for the first time, the best of his writing from TheNew Yorker over the same period.
Here is the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill, and the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz. Gladwell sits with Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen, as he sells rotisserie ovens, and divines the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer" who can calm savage animals with the touch of his hand. He explores intelligence tests and ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias" and why it was that everyone in Silicon Valley once tripped over themselves to hire the same college graduate.
"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.
Discussion Questions
According to Steven Pinker's review in the New York Times, Gladwell's essays in What the Dog Saw have to do with "counterintuitive knowledge." In this book what findings, specifically, seem to subvert or turn common sense on its head?
Another way in which Gladwell styles his essays is that he uses specific set pieces and and expands them into a wider inquiry. Consider some examples—say, ketchup or hair dye. Where else does Gladwell move from an initial focus on a narrow topic to the larger implications.
Gladwell also uses the "straw man" method of persuasion. He begins with a premise that we easily accept (the straw man) then proceeds to knock it down. It leads to surprise, a sort of "wow, I never saw it that way!" What are some of the essays in which Gladwell uses the straw dog approach? Do you find it affective?
Which essays did you most enjoy and why? Which surprised you the most?
Gladwell has sometimes been described—in this and other works—as facile. In other words, he's been accused of reaching for easy conclusions that fit his overall view, while sometimes ignoring messy evidence that doesn't. Can you find any evidence that this is the case? Does Gladwell present a world that is too neatly wrapped? Or is he simply exploring anomalies where he finds them?
Why do we have one type of ketchup as opposed to multiple varieties of mustard?
From the essay, "Blowing Up," talk about Taleb Nassim and his theory of markets and investment. Can his basic ideas be applied to other experiences or events?
If by any chance you've read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, do Cesar Millan's dog training methods seem familiar...or completely different than what David Wroblewski wrote about in his novel?
In "Open Secrets," how does Gladwell connect Enron, Watergate, prostate cancer research, and Osama Bin Laden— three seemingly disparate subjects? Do you agree with his assessment? What is the difference, according to Gladwell, between puzzles and mysteries? Is this just semantics...or is he reaching for something deeper?
Talk about what Gladwell has to say about the accuracy of mammograms as a diagnostic tool.
Do you accept Gladwell's argument about plagiarism in the essay, "Something Borrowed"?
In "The Art of Failure," Gladwell discusses the difference between choking and panicking? How does he differentiate the two? Are they really mutually exclusive as he presents them? What do you think of his assessment of John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s plane crash? Is Gladwell's analysis glib... or has he hit on some buried structure of the human psyche?
In his chapter about the Challenger explosion, do you agree with his assessment that "we don't really want the safest of all possible worlds"? Do you believe that any of the disasters in Part Two could have been foretold and prevented?
In what way is criminal profiling not "a triumph of forensic analysis," but a "party trick"? Does Gladwell make his point?
Discussion Questions provided by LitLovers.com
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