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There’s a review[1] on Amazon that speaks to the kind of books Gladwell writes, and it's both funny and perhaps contains a shred of truth. It goes: ”There's a
by wenc 8y ago
There’s a review[1] on Amazon that speaks to the kind of books Gladwell writes, and it's both funny and perhaps contains a shred of truth. It goes:
”There's a school of thought that runs something like this: the average US citizen isn't very bright, has a limited attention span, and has an appetite only for the superficial. So if you want to write a book about something you feel to be important, you have to sugar the pill - with lots and lots of sugar and make sure it's a very small pill indeed.
Hence the style "American-Folksy." In this genre the author leads the reader gently along by means of first-person narrative, tons of anecdote, and just the gentlest hint of new information here and there. The lexicon is undemanding and the pace is calculated to be just brisk enough to prevent the onset of catatonia while being leisurely enough not to require any strenuous intellectual activity on the part of the reader. It's basically DisneyWords.
This is a well-tried genre used across a wide variety of subjects. In Search of Excellence and The Omnivore's Dilemma both use the same style despite their contexts being very different. And Weiner uses American-Folksy here for precisely the same reasons and to precisely the same effect. The purpose of American-Folksy is to take something that could have made a somewhat interesting 6-page monograph and stretch it out into a book-length peregrination.”
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3KMN29SZX9ZKS/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=145169167X https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3KMN29SZX9ZKS/re...
- thaumasiotes 8y agoYes, Gladwell's books are total nonsense that sounds good. But... that means he has exactly the skill set you'd hope for in a writing instructor. He's not teaching you how to think or how to do research. He's teaching you how to sound good.
- starpilot 8y agoIsn't this all pop science bestsellers? Freakonomics etc.? I mean it's not for everyone, but if (big if) it's reasonably accurate what is the harm?
- nordsieck 8y ago> Isn't this all pop science bestsellers? ... if (big if) it's reasonably accurate what is the harm? IMO, a bag of truth and lies is more dangerous than anything else: there's enough truth that the lies sound more plausible making it pretty difficult to separate them. It's much better to just steer clear of unethical authors.
- jacobolus 8y agoFreakonomics is a triumph of marketing and speculation over expertise. Its point was never to be “accurate”, but to be controversial, to which end it focused on ambitious “counter-intuitive” claims in far flung fields (in which the authors had no deep knowledge or experience), backed with sloppy data and analysis. Most of its claims have aged rather poorly as more grounded and meticulous scholars examined them. On the flip side it got a lot of high school students interested in studying economics and statistics once they got to college.
- ekianjo 8y agoThe reasonably accurate is highly dubious. I have read several of Gladwell's books and as pointed out by the notes here, there is a lot of shortcuts taken and blatant contradictions if you avoid getting lost in the nicely written narrative.
- shubhamjain 8y agoI wonder if there's any popular non-fiction book which someone hasn't accused of being simplistic. The same criticism was levelled for "Sapiens." It seems a kind of gate-keeping, just like how an expert programmer would pounce on a simple explanation shouting, "hey this doesn't cover X, Y or Z." Sapiens might not be 100% accurate, but superbly covers tens of ideas that will gives you a fresh perspective to understand history and humans. I haven't read Galdwell's books, but read most of his New Yorker articles. While I have observed that sometimes he cherry-picks data, his gift of communicating ideas effectively is un-ignorable. I have had trouble finding non-fiction writers that can match his ability. Gladwell might not be for you, but it's unfair to criticize him just because his writing lacks an academic treatment for the subject.
- forgotmyhnacc 8y agoThere are lots of popular nonfiction books that aren't simplistic. They just may be older than you would expect. For example, On the Origin of Species is a book packed with information, yet still approachable by most. You can find books in many fields - science, philosophy, history that are incredibly well written. The last book I read that was written well was Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse In the Age of Show Business. (I've read Gladwell before and have mixed feeling about his writing)
- Bartweiss 8y agoYou might enjoy any of Mike Dash's writing, also. He walks the line between vivid history and nonfiction novels, but he's also a diligent researcher who's pretty often covering material from unexamined primary sources. Single-story history is of course easier to make vivid than thesis-based writing, but he still stands out to me as way above the usual mark for density * readability.
- sideshowb 8y agoI don't think GP was criticising the books for not being academic, so much as stretching out 6 pages of worthwhile material to an entire book. I've dipped into Sapiens - it does seems to contain more ideas per chapter than the Gladwell books I've read, though I'll reserve final judgement until I get around to reading it fully.
- HeavenBanned 8y agoBrian Greene's books on Physics would be the polar opposite of the "American-Folksy."
- Grustaf 8y agoI love reading one-star reviews of Gladwell, Nassim Taleb and other airport literature, I only wish there was a review site for TED talks, the real live equivalent.
- justanothersys 8y agoSee Ben Bratton’s TED talk: https://youtu.be/Yo5cKRmJaf0 https://youtu.be/Yo5cKRmJaf0
- DantesKite 8y agoI thought Nassim Taleb’s books (Fooled by Randomness and Skin in the Game) were quite rigorous. What makes his book airport literature?
- hobo_mark 8y agoI ran into his last book while waiting in an airport (of course) and opened a few pages at random to get a feel of it, maybe it was bad luck but any page I opened read just like a straight transcript of his Twitter feed...
- nindalf 8y agoSkin in the game was anything but rigorous. I wrote a longer review of the book here [1] but the gist is this - "skin in the game" is a framework for responding to people's ideas by attacking the people directly. He provides little or no evidence while making extraordinary claims. > He makes the extraordinary claim that “10 percent of Americans will spend at least a year in the top 1 percent, and more than half of all Americans will spent a year in the top 10 percent”. You’d think he’d link to a source that proves this. He does not. He doesn’t even clarify if he’s talking about income or wealth. This isn’t an oversight, it’s deliberate. As he explains, “just a little bit of significant data is needed when one is right”. Of course Taleb is right, so he absolves himself of the need to prove his claims. He simply needs to state them for them to be true. He actually derides Thomas Piketty for including data in Capital in the 21st Century! [1] - https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/skin-in-the-game/ https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/skin-in-the-game/
- dalbasal 8y agoA problem, for the author's perspective, in adopting this mentality is that it leaves a lot of room for dishonesty with oneself. Clunky writing writing can be explained away with "readers are dull and lazy." Whether that's the case or the author has not found a user-friendly & medium appropriate way to work through difficult material... Concluding the latter is likely to produce the best book. Brian Greene wrote a fantastic walk through of special relativity. He used the "atomic pong on a moving training" that will take an ordinary reader from speed of light invariance to time travel. It was (iircc) a few pages, one picture (the atom bouncing on a train). Incredible bit of pop-science writing. From there, you can grok what "time flips in a black hole." Assuming readers (or users) are stupid is just a lot less likely to result in better writing. Concluding that your writing can be easier to understand is.
- echion 8y ago> fantastic walk through of special relativity Do you have a link? It's not obvious which treatment you mean (have done a simple search).
- christophilus 8y agoThis is true. I’ve read a number of non fiction books lately, and this style of writing drives me crazy. I’ve started reading summaries on Scribd instead. All of the meat; none of the fluff. If I want to read for entertainment or inspiration, I’ll read poetry or fiction. Many modern non-fiction books could be written as a single blog post, and it would be an improvement.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoYou're not the target audience. The target audience is exactly as described - curious but not too bright, easily distracted, and fond of a good narrative with simplistic predigested conclusions, which ideally include a self-improving or reassuring takeaway. Most pop sci is a strange hybrid of business and personal self-help, with a few tech-ish and sciencey trimmings. Most of the rest is rehashed biography made of stock anecdotes. The remainder includes some real science, and is often written by real scientists.
- eitally 8y agoI'm not sure why you were downvoted -- I think you're 100% correct.
- larrywright 8y agoI think you're being unnecessarily cynical here. For the sake of argument, let's set aside whether Gladwell's conclusions are correct or not, and just focus on the structure and style of his writing. Not all brains process information the same way. Just like some people are visual learners, and some are auditory learners, some people react better to one type of anecdote versus another. Offering multiple anecdotes or stories around a given topic offers the opportunity for more people to "click" with the concept being presented. I'll give an example from my own life. I enjoy reading about new technologies, whether programming languages, cloud services, databases, etc. Frequently over the years, I've heard of something, and read a couple of things about it, and then decided "That's not very interesting, I don't think I'd use that, so I can ignore it." Then some time passes and I read something else about it, written from a different point of view. Maybe it describes an application for it that I hadn't considered (and that wasn't presented in the previous things I'd read), or perhaps it relates it to something I already know in such a way that I understand where it fits into my world. I reconsider my position, and find that technology X is, in fact, interesting and worth paying attention to. That's happened more than once. Probably closer to a dozen times over my career. It's the same thing with books of this nature. If you're the kind of person who can look at a summary of a concept or a new thing, and immediately take stock of what it is, how it works, and how it applies, that's great. You're exactly right, you're not the target audience. That doesn't mean that the people who are the target audience are simple-minded folks who are looking for the intellectual equivalent of junk food. It simply means they process information differently than you do.
- mayankkaizen 8y agoI have read Outliers by him and kind of liked it at the time. But later on I realized that Outliers book, along with much of his work, is some kind of scam. I didn't how to express that feeling until I read OP comment mentioning Amazon review.
- stuaxo 8y agoIndeed he has shilled for the tobacco industry and others throughout his career, if he did a course on making money this way it would be far more honest. https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/ https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/
- Cpoll 8y agoI'd like to add his article 'Is marijuana as safe as we think,' which uses his usual brand of correlation=causation and use of anecdotes to cast doubt on cannabis legalization. If nothing else, it's strange behaviour. If I were accused of being a tobacco shill, I would avoid writing articles with conclusions that align with tobacco industry interests... Disclaimer: I have a chip on my shoulder about this, and I cancelled my New Yorker subscription over that article.
- cooperadymas 8y agoThat book review could have been summed up in 8 words, but just writing out the facts as briefly as possible is not always the best way to convey information. Me think, why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?
- alberto_ol 8y agoAt first I thought that the review you linked was of one of Gladwell's books. Actually it is of the book "The Geography of Genius: Lessons from the World's Most Creative Places" by Eric Weiner.
- paleotrope 8y agoIf you read that review in Malcolm Gladwell's voice it completely works.
- dwighttk 8y agoAll communication is storytelling.
- AdamSC1 8y agoI used to fall into the camp of being frustrated at Gladwell's books. I would buy them, read them, learn from them, but be frustrated I spent that time and only really got one nugget from the book. Then I became an adjunct professor. Teaching in my first course, I noticed that even the brightest students would ask me to go over content again with additional examples and it brought me back to these debates about Gladwell's books. I decided to split my class in half, into group A and group B and run an experiment (that wouldn't impact the student's marks). For Group A, I would give a detailed two hour breakdown of "Topic #1" explaining each element of it carefully and slowly. For "Topic #2", I would give only a thirty minute breakdown of the topic comprised of three anecdotes applying the topic. For Group B, I would give the detailed two hour breakdown on "Topic #2" and the thirty minute anecdote series on "Topic #1". Then I quizzed them. Both groups performed better on the anecdote topics by a fairly significant margin, and not only had the class average performed better, but, I found that many individuals who often struggled on tests were performing FAR above their averages. When I look back to the business concepts I remember, it's never long convoluted blog posts, or books covering an array of concepts. It's ideas that can be expressed in a few words (Jelly Effect, Tipping Point, Purple Cow) and then are beaten to death with examples. There seem two be two reasons, first and foremost, not every anecdote, example, or explanation resonates the same with each person. So by increasing the number of examples you give, you are increasing the likelihood of an individual reader being able to understand. Second, just like we learned in elementary with spelling and times tables, to truly 'learn' something repetition and reinforcement are really important and increase the likelihood of people being able to recall and apply the concepts that are taught. Gladwell and others present just one or two nuggets of brilliance across their books, but, I think most educators would agree with me, that it is because of that repetition and variety of example's that most of us understand and remember the concepts they were trying to teach.
- Isamu 8y agoI agree, and further I think of books like Gladwell's as a kind of summary with pointers to deeper reading by following up with the references. I don't really expect one book to be the final answer on a topic. In particular, if you do look up the references in a book (even just in a cursory manner) you may be surprised to find that you don't think they support the author's interpretation. In short, if Gladwell did supply more density or detail, it wouldn't really make his interpretation more right. It might seem to strengthen it in some peoples eyes, but that is an illusion.
- briandear 8y ago“The average US citizen is not very bright..” That’s pretty offensive. If we say that about Mexicans, Koreans or any other nationality, that wouldn’t be ok would it? Somehow it’s ok to insult an entire nationality and it’s “funny?” I don’t consider reviews or statements that blanket-insult a nationality to be “funny and perhaps containing a shred of truth.” Replace “American” with any other ethnicity or nationality and such comments wouldn’t be allowed on HN or in an Amazon review. The average American has average intelligence, just like the average anything else. When I was living outside the US, there wasn’t any particular difference in terms of pop/superficial awareness. Koreans, Chinese, French, Mexicans — none of the nationalities I’ve lived amongst had above average intellectual fortitude as a culture. They have idiots and geniuses and normal people just like everywhere else. So the ideas behind “American Folksy” could be applied anywhere, but calling is American just makes the whole review offensive.
- Spooky23 8y agoIt’s a cynical view. The real root of this genre is that magazines are dead. There is a market for tweets and books. Everything else is a path to poverty. In 1960, Gladwell stuff and Freakonomics, etc would be feature articles in Life or US News & World Report, or Fortune. Now feature writers are extinct.