9 BOOKS FROM A BEST-SELLING AUTHOR'S READING LIST
Malcolm Gladwell isn't shy
about sharing his enthusiasm for what he reads.
Here are some of the works that have made the greatest impact on him
Here are some of the works that have made the greatest impact on him
Nixon
Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man by Garry Wills
Gladwell said he would
never try to write about politics because there are already so many fantastic
political writers. He cites the Pulitzer Prizewinning author Garry Wills and
his presidential biography, Nixon Agonistes, as a primary case study. “A
classic from the early '70s by one of the great political writers of his time,“
he said.
Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb
Gladwell likes to write
about compellingly cantankerous people. Of late, he has argued that the job of
managers is to “harbour and protect obnoxious and brilliant people“. Early in
his career, he found such a subject in controversial investor-philosopher
Nassim Taleb. In a profile, Gladwell said Taleb's first book, Fooled by
Randomness, is “to conventional Wall Street wisdom approximately what Martin
Luther's ninety-five theses were to the Catholic Church“.
Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do by Tom Vanderbilt
Written by Slate columnist
Tom Vanderbilt, Traffic investigates human nature from beyond the driver's seat.Gladwell
says Traffic is “one of the heirs to the Freakonomics legacy“.Vanderbilt, “a
very clever young writer, tells us all sorts of things about what driving says
about us,“ Gladwell said.
The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin
There are thousands of books
about CEOs.Gladwell believes you only need to read one, The Opposable Mind, by
University of Toronto management professor Roger Martin. The book “explores
what makes great CEOs stand out from their peers,“ he said.
Freakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
Gladwell loved
Freakonomics. “I don't need to say much here,“ he said in an interview. “This
book invented an entire genre.Economics was never supposed to be this
entertaining.“
The Person and the Situation by Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross
Gladwell said that
University of Michigan psychologist Richard Nisbett “basically gave me my view
of the world“. The Person and the Situation is the book that most affected him.
He read it in one sitting in the summer of 1996. In his new foreword for the book,
Gladwell wrote: “It offers a way of re-ordering ordinary experience...We see
things that aren't there and we make predictions that we ought not to make: we
privilege the `person' and we discount the influence of the `situation'...“
Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession by Janet Malcolm
The author considers Janet
Malcolm to be his other role model as a non-fiction writer.“I reread Malcolm's
Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession just to remind myself how non-fiction
is supposed to be done,“ he said.
The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis
For Gladwell, the Moneyball
and Flash Boys author Michael Lewis is “the finest storyteller of our
generation“. He even considers him a role model. “I read Lewis for the same
reasons I watch Tiger Woods,“ he said in an interview. “I'll never play like
that. But it's good to be reminded every now and again what genius looks like.“
Irresistible by Adam Alter
“One of my favourite books
of the year,“ Gladwell tweeted when this book launched in 2017. Alter, a
psychologist at New York University, explores the myriad ways in which digital
technology and social media are destroying our brains.
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