What the Dog Saw

What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures is the latest book by Malcolm Gladwell, famous for The Tipping Point and other excellent non-fiction books that look into how people think and the way things work in our society. What the Dog Saw, however, contains not one fluid narrative but a collection of articles from The New Yorker, Gladwell's other job.

Gladwell writes in a way few authors can. He has the ability to make the most mundane things interesting and also possesses an uncanny ability to take readers for a ride in the mind and inner workings of individuals and societal systems. I greatly enjoy his writing, and his first three books are all "classics" in my mind. What this gets me to, then, is my thoughts on the book.

The articles in What the Dog Saw were selected by Gladwell as examples of his finest work. Many of the articles fascinated me: an article on how to solve homelessness, a study of the effectiveness of generalizations, and an article on the mechanics behind human responses to stress. Several are rather dull: the history of hair dye, the follies of the creator of the birth control pill, and the reasons why one brand of ketchup dominates the market.

It's a great book, but it feels weird as you jump from article to article. Of Gladwell's four books, this is clearly the weakest. The articles are quite good, but you can read most (perhaps all?) on his website, where you have the ability to pick and choose what you want to read. Admittedly, though, given the number of articles and their length (not to mention reading it all on a computer screen), the book format presents a preferable option. Still, Gladwell writes at his best when he can completely immerse himself in an idea. All of the articles present opportunities for Gladwell to look into one aspect of an idea, but the book format typically suits him better.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars (it's not really a "book" per se, but it's still really good)

28 books, 118 days...at this rate I'll read 86 books