BOOK SPECIAL.... 9 BOOKS FROM A BEST-SELLING AUTHOR'S READING LIST 

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

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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