Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
By Malcolm Gladwell

This book uses David and Goliath as a metaphor, but it’s not the metaphor you might expect.  Gladwell spends some time explaining the story and its setting in the ancient world, with notes on the surprising amount of scholarly research devoted to it. We modern Americans misunderstand the story’s intent and have the original message wrong.

Public Domain in the US: copyright expired

We think of David as a hopeless underdog facing an unbeatable foe, saved only by divine intervention.  “No one in ancient times would have doubted David’s tactical advantage once it was known he was an expert in slinging.”  Gladwell writes that soldiers trained to use sling shots were as formidable as archers.  Goliath was a heavily armored infantry warrior and there was no way he could chase down and engage David; he was a sitting duck. (He may have also had acromegaly: speculation on the diseases of historical figures is always intriguing, even if they are seldom provable.)  I found this part of the book surprisingly interesting and fun; much better than the “favorite Bible stories for children” sort of idea I had before.

Gladwell sets out to demonstrate that what we commonly think of as strengths and weaknesses can be very different, and that the underdog wins more often than we expect.  He covers varying subjects such as the children of wealthy parents, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, primary school class sizes, deterring crime, and girls’ basketball.  He offers individual stories, and adds research findings to generalize his points.  In all these cases, what we commonly think of as advantages make someone stronger for a while, but then the advantage plateaus and getting “more” is actually a disadvantage.  The stronger side is invested in what worked in the past and how things “should” be done. This blinds people to the reality of what confronts them. For example:

• Considering “wars over the last two hundred years, how often do you think the [more powerful] side wins?  Most of us would put that number at close to 100 percent… [but] just under a third of the time, the weaker country wins.”
• Gladwell seems to agree with another book reviewed on this blog that wealth can prevent parents from raising self-sufficient children.
• He shows evidence that there is an optimum class size for elementary school and argues against the American obsession with reducing class sizes.  (And it is an obsession: “77 percent of Americans think that it makes more sense to… lower class sizes than to raise [good] teachers’ salaries. Do you know how few things 77 percent of Americans agree on?”)
• “Cracking down” on criminals and insurgents often has the unexpected effect of making the problem worse.  This occurs when authorities lose legitimacy.  I found this point especially interesting: for people to obey an authority they must first feel they have a voice, second that the laws are predictable, and third that the authority is fair.  This is from the view of the “underdog”, not of the authority itself. “What matters in deterrence is what matters to offenders.”  When legitimacy is lost, offenders become willing to bear extreme forms of punishment.  This effect occurs in sentences for crime: “A reasonable assessment of the research to date is that [extreme] sentence severity has no effect on the level of crime in society.”

Personally, I believe that what really happens in the world is usually more important than what should happen, and the idea that I could be wasting my time and money while pushing my goals farther away is disconcerting.

This short book offers an important argument: the upside down “U” of strength and weakness.  Many advantages strengthen you for awhile, then top out, and at some point “more” actually weakens you.  Before you double-down on an action, think about this and consider what the evidence tells you.

PS: I read an electronic version of Gladwell’s book.  After the cover and title pages is a “welcome” with links to “Begin Reading”, the table of contents, and copyright page; and these pages are grouped at the back of the text.  Since on-line retailers offer previews starting at page one, this arrangement gives the reader the maximum preview of Gladwell’s text, and placing typical front-matter at the end is no inconvenience in an ebook.  Ebooks are evolving and I enjoy the format.