Essays on Malcolm Gladwell

3 September 1963

Non-fiction writer, journalist, public speaker

• The Tipping Point (2000)
• Blink (2005)
• Outliers (2008)
• What the Dog Saw (2009)
• David and Goliath (2013)
• Talking to Strangers (2019)
• Revisionist History (podcast; 2016–present)

3 September 1963 (age 58)

Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist and writer best known for his unique perspective on popular culture. He adeptly treaded the boundary between popularizer and intellectual.

The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005), Outliers (2008), What the Dog Saw (2009), David and Goliath (2013), Talking to Strangers (2019), The Bomber Mafia (2021)

Gladwell's books make readers care. He challenges us to rethink how we raise our children, how we build our workplaces, and how we live our lives. He gives us hope that if we practice enough, we can become great musicians or athletes. That if an idea is worthwhile, we can make it take off.

Gladwell's writing style depends on an excellent sense of pacing, paired with the deliberate and calculated withholding of information to keep the reader guessing until the very last word. This is a literary technique known as suspense. Gladwell's formula is very simple: he thoroughly researches each chapter of a book, and writes a separate piece for each one.

Gladwell has become an all-out international phenomenon - and has helped create a highly contagious hybrid genre of nonfiction, one that takes a nonthreatening and counterintuitive look at pop culture and the mysteries of the everyday. Gladwell's writings often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences, like sociology and psychology.

“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.”
“No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.”
“Achievement is talent plus preparation”