What the Dog Saw

And Other Adventures

By: Malcolm Gladwell

Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell

Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

The best-selling 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 The New 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.

©2009 Malcolm Gladwell (P)2009 Hachette Audio

Great book

The chapter about Ron Popeil alone is worth it. Very Very interesting information.

Cheers, Brad Detroit, MI

well written

well thought out, well written, interesting topics. i skipped chapter 16, too much horror for me to take in. rest of book was great!

Rethinking the Given Information

Here and there this is compelling and interesting information, but there is a great deal of hohum.

Fantastic as always

I have read or listened to almost all of Malcom Gladwell’s books and this is no exception. Deep, entertaining and insightful.

DetailrfsD

Gladwell is a master story teller.He could read thw phone book and make it meaningful

Gladwell in New Fun-Size!

What made the experience of listening to What the Dog Saw the most enjoyable?

Covering a broad range of topics, from dog whisperers to the Veg-o-Matic, NASA to mustard, and such awesome-sounding topics like risk homeostasis and creeping determinism - Gladwell delivers once again with his series of essays from the New Yorker. He meanders pleasantly from theme to theme, so you're not stuck with any overarching idea for too long, and yet he still manages to put together some incredible comparisons and conclusions. What is the difference between choking in a sport/skill vs panicking, and why would that matter? Why do we have issues connecting dots that lead up to terrorist attacks? What does breast cancer have to do with birth control and third world countries? On top of all that, Gladwell is such a master storyteller that he can make the evolution of condiments fascinating. My only minor complaint is that the Ron Popeil story in the beginning was a bit long and probably a decent story for the middle somewhere, but a bit weak for an opener. The cherry on top is how brilliantly he reads his own stuff. Well played, Sir.

Very interesting, but a slow start

Some very interesting articles, and I really like his observations. Unfortunately (in my opinion) he starts the book with a couple really long pieces that are less interesting, and he almost lost me. Happily I made it through to the shorter, more engaging articles beyond.

Excellent insight!

What did you love best about What the Dog Saw?

Incredibly interesting stories of human nature

What did you like best about this story?

Great coverage, contrast and prose

Which character – as performed by Malcolm Gladwell – was your favorite?

The Clairol advertising woman

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

ThR teaching module

Any additional comments?

Gladwell's is a spectacular narrator!

Great listen

I would agree that this is not the best of Gladwell's books. However, it is very interesting and a great listen told by the author.

Thought Provoking

Too much data leads to over confidence. Experts aren't really experts. Process trumps gut. I encourage you to read if you enjoyed Gladwells other books.