Glibness and inconsistency weaken theory of underdogs

by Malcolm Gladwell
Little, Brown & Co
2.5 stars
Janet Maslin

The world becomes less complicated with a Malcolm Gladwell book in hand. Gladwell raises questions - should David have won his fight with Goliath? - that are reassuringly clear even before they are answered. His answers are just tricky enough to suggest the reader has learned something, regardless of whether that's true.

As Gladwell specifies, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants just sets out to explore ideas. The first is that there is greatness and beauty in David-Goliath fights, at least when the underdog wins. The second is that "we consistently get these kinds of conflicts wrong" by failing to realise giants have weaknesses, and that underdogs can accomplish the unexpected. If this were a more serious book, it would have to apply that thought to terrorism. But Gladwell is not in the business of providing disturbing information.

Instead, his emphases are on uplift and novelty. So he analyses the David-Goliath bout, comparing the effects of slingshots to those of sword and spear. He lauds David's little-guy manoeuvrability. And he suggests that Goliath, like scientifically studied giants, might have had acromegaly, a growth disorder that would have meant a pituitary tumour, which could have created vision problems, which might explain why Goliath had an attendant to lead him. Maybe that led him to misjudge David's power. Maybe the Israelites watched from a distorting vantage point that made Goliath look excessively big, David excessively puny. Do we see the relevance of these thoughts to our daily lives?

Not yet? Then consider the title of this three-part book's first section: The Advantages of Disadvantages (and the Disadvantages of Advantages). This turns out to be much more blunt than it sounds. During the course of a multipart, one-note argument, Gladwell demonstrates that short teenage girls playing basketball and a schoolteacher with a 29-student classroom could make seemingly adverse circumstances work to their advantages.

The girls learn to dominate the courts on which they play. And the teacher likes the variety of that seemingly overcrowded classroom, which may stir up an argument among the polite elite most likely to read Gladwell: the contrast between elite prep schools and colleges and more downscale ones in which students may be likelier to excel. His advice: ignore school ratings. Be a big fish in a small pond. Who wants to be a guppy at Harvard?