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When pop history bombs: a response to Malcolm Gladwell

242 points by diodorus 5y ago

underseacables 5y ago
I miss his old work, when it was focused more on pop-culture, and less on idealism, and politics. The podcast was going really well but as soon as he started going off on politics I lost interest really quick.
- SQueeeeeL 5y ago
  I love the idea that any history/philosophy can be divorced from politics. Like, I only enjoy hearing this human beings thoughts and opinions, but only if they exist in this narrow band of what I deem acceptable. His ideas on satire are extremely valuable IMO, explicitly because of the political nature of his arguments. It critiques the inability of modern social systems inability critique those in power, and skillfully intermixes the politics of the time to enhance his point (that part about A Wonderful Country is beautiful, how an extremely political point can be made through satire, leagues beyond SNL)
  - mejari 5y ago
    I think there's a valid distinction between "using the politics of the time to better understand history" and "pushing personal politics through the teaching of history"
- jedimastert 5y ago
  Yeah, I kinda dipped when I felt like there were more opinions than history. Like, I understand that all history is colored by the person telling it, and that was kinda the whole idea behind Revisionist History in the first place, but I felt like he moved from highlighting less known aspects of history to highlighting basically where he thought history had gone wrong.
- Tactician_mark 5y ago
  Was there a time when Gladwell wasn't political? The Tipping Point was his first book, and it helped popularize broken windows policing.
  - sjg007 5y ago
    That style of policing was popular before Gladwell. It was Giuliani who really doubled down on it in NYC as the exemplar. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory It is also known as stop and frisk. This type of policing has also been adopted to traffic stops as well and arguably has lead to warrior cop policing. Gladwell discusses the implications of this in Talking to Strangers. So if you want a perspective on guns, gun violence, policing from the 1970s until today, I recommend it.
Ericson2314 5y ago
Esssh. How many times does Malcolm Gladwell need to be exposed as a fraud before he looses his pulpit? (So much for post-truth being a mere problem for the rabble...)
- arkaic 5y ago
  Twitter style comment right here.
  - groby_b 5y ago
    There isn't much else to say. Malcom Gladwell is an utter hack. The mainstream media refuses to acknowledge that and glorifies everything he says. Meanwhile, pretty much anybody whose field has been touched by Gladwell reports that his account of their field is utterly uninformed, lacking nuance, and shaped to reach a foregone conclusion. What more is there?
    - jfoutz 5y ago
      Malcom Gladwell writes clearly and persuasively. I don't believe he uses his rhetoric to deceive, I don't think it's full on sophistry. That said, he clearly won't let the facts get in the way of a good story. As much as I want truth, evidence and proof to have one true meaning, the words really mean different things to different people. Heck, they mean different things to the same person in different contexts. Malcom Gladwell (in my humble opinion) is very good at making political arguments, not scientist arguments. They sound true. They engage in intellectual and emotional ways. I have, with multiple Gladwell books, been led down the garden path. But golly it's a pretty and enjoyable walk. And eventually that walk leads me to other interesting stuff, like _thinking fast and slow_. I guess, it's useful to me to read stories dressed up as science (kinda). Otherwise, how could I tell if the science I'm reading is just a story?
      - lubujackson 5y ago
        It is hard to read this as a positive thing. You are basically describing a con-man (or more neutrally, a politician) who is skilled at convincing people of things through stories that are not factually accurate but feel accurate - "Truthiness" as Jon Stewart called it. At best, it is a shortcut to convince groups of people of a point but it is the opposite of informative - people come away with bad information, not partial information and curiosity to learn more. He is specifically disliked because he is selling the "take-aways" as knowledge when they are the opposite, then says he is just a storyteller - which is good and fine except he is marketed and digested as a layman's source of truth. Which is why we have people walking around thinking they can be a concert-grade pianist with 10,000 hours of practice even though the argument falls apart with the slightest analysis. If Hacker News caters to curious "hacker mindset" types I think Gladwell is the opposite of curiosity: insights without discussion or understanding.
patwolf 5y ago
I enjoy Revisionist History, but I have learned to take everything he says with a grain of salt. He throws out much of the nuance of history in order to neatly meld it with his narrative. The Boston Tea Party episode, for example, tried to paint the revolution as a bunch of rich smugglers upset about losing business. That may have been a small part of it, but it definitely is not the whole story. I'm afraid to ever mention anything I heard from him in casual conversation because someone more knowledgeable would probably call me out.
- xapata 5y ago
  You're right in general; Gladwell is often wrong, but that's actually a pretty good take on the Boston Tea Party.
- NullInvictus 5y ago
  I think Gladwell cares about history, and he cares about story, but if (as is often the case in history) he has to choose one at the expense of the other, it is going to be _story_ that he chooses every single time. As an overly broad generalization, Gladwell is at heart a journalist, not a historian (even though he has a bachelor's in history). I enjoy listening to Revisionist history and reading some of his books, because some things in history are revealed by trying to form some kind of narrative (e.g., Historical Materialism), but he's not telling you history. He's forming a story from history. But I think his work is often an excellent stepping off point to real history texts, and it sometimes gets you to think about the second-order effect of things (his episode on Brown v. Board was extremely interesting). Ironically the Boston Tea Party episode was also the one that broke me and made me bring a lot more grains of salt to my experience of his work. I think it's one of his worst episodes, and one where he tips his hand a little too far and breaks the illusion for anyone who has even casually read any serious works on the period. It's a _piece_ as you said, but it's an incredible oversimplification.
  - sjg007 5y ago
    Most of history is a story written by the victors and what has survived. Unless there is primary evidence and even then most of that contains interpretation. But I'm interested in what do you think the Boston Tea Party episode gets wrong?
imNotTheProb 5y ago
Blink- "you can figure out a person's intentions from split second facial expressions" Talking to strangers- "everyone and their culture is different, it's impossible to know if someone is lying"
- feintruled 5y ago
  Yeah, Blink was the first and last of his books I read. Nice anecdotes but it struck me as nothing more than saying "Your gut feeling is right, except when it's wrong"
  - ksd482 5y ago
    Same!! I watched his TED talk on David and Goliath story and I thought he was interesting. Then I picked up Blink. 25 pages in, I realized he was full of shit.
  - Applejinx 5y ago
    More like, your intuitive jump related to areas in which you are experienced and expert, can and does give you conclusions way way quicker than it gives you justifications. Hoving looking at a fake sculpture and instantly going 'NOPE' is not a Joe Average reaction, but draws on lots of experience. The story of gamblers giving stress reactions to unfamiliar and dangerous card games is GAMBLERS. Your gut feeling has nothing to do with it. What are you so expert at, that you can just glance and you'll know? (as in, more than would be justified by the lack of analysis and prolonged exposure) Being able to plausibly form hugely accelerated judgements and have them check out, is interesting. It's also plausible to me that few people build up that much expertise, to be able to do that. But for those who do… and it can be in any field, from any person… it's an interesting perspective.
- CalChris 5y ago
  Talking To Strangers was a choice for Zoom book club I was in during the shutdown. I was looking forward to it a little since I recognized but didn't know the name. I couldn't make my way through it and dropped out. He has a New Yorker writing style but without having anything to say.
greggman3 5y ago
A much better account of WW2 in the Pacific is the latest Hardcore History series. The 6 part "Supernova in the East" https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/ https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/
- mayneack 5y ago
  Carlin actually had Gladwell on recently to talk about the book. He wasn't anywhere close to as critical as this review, however. https://pca.st/5rvqo9kz https://pca.st/5rvqo9kz
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    > He wasn't anywhere close to as critical as this review, however. When someone with a much (much!) bigger following than you parachutes into your field and joins you on your platform (where you are currently covering the same topic), you maybe withhold your most severe criticism of their work.
- billfruit 5y ago
  Barbara Tuchman's "Stilwell and the American Experience in China" is a good booklength treatment of WW2 in Asia, also prominently featuring a prominent proponent of air warfare, General Chennault.
- afterburner 5y ago
  Carlin has also been criticized for being loose with history in favour of story. Carlin's podcast series are much, much longer than Gladwell's typical podcast treatments though, so at least it lets him include a lot more details.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    > Carlin has also been criticized for being loose with history in favour of story. How so? He seems to be pretty upfront in talking about his sources, quoting from them, and saying repeatedly that he's a journalist and not a historian.
openasocket 5y ago
There's also some more nitty-gritty critiques I found in this thread: https://twitter.com/Alan_Allport/status/1395770118785966086 https://twitter.com/Alan_Allport/status/1395770118785966086 . And also I found this review interesting as well: https://thebaffler.com/latest/narrative-napalm-kulwin https://thebaffler.com/latest/narrative-napalm-kulwin
afterburner 5y ago
It's not like Gladwell doesn't criticize LeMay. He even accuses the entire US strategic command of waving away the responsibility of considering the morality of such a brutal firebombing campaign. I didn't come away from the audiobook thinking LeMay had "won" even the battle, let alone the war (meaning ultimately precision bombing has won the argument in modern times). Granted, I already knew plenty about this before, but my impression in the end from Gladwell was that both Hansel and LeMay were wrong in different ways, just that LeMay's aggressive firebombing looked like it was "doing something" to the higher ups. The technology of the time simply did not allow the precision bombing approach to "look" like it was even "doing something" (and it was certainly failing by its own primary metric, hitting the target). Indiscriminate bombing is easy, so you can point at photos and say you succeeded in doing it. Gladwell of course simplifies it a lot and wraps it up in a bow, because his strength is telling a story, not conducting a detailed analysis. At the very least, perhaps a lot of people will become aware of these events and be made to think about them. Fact is, no one really knows if the firebombing hastened Japanese surrender or convinced the Japanese population that they really had lost. Maybe it did, and maybe it was important. Or maybe not. And it was certainly horrifying. Gladwell doesn't dwell enough on the uncertainty, but he doesn't forget to mention the moral issues.
- escape_goat 5y ago
  It is a shame that nobody really knows the impact of this thing that was experienced by millions of people and extensively documented by the Japanese and subsequently studied by Japanese historians as well as all historians of the war and of East Asia everywhere. I guess it will always be the case that perhaps we achieved ends that offer some justification to the means we employed.
  - afterburner 5y ago
    Gladwell did describe the horrific nature of the firestorms in detail. I don't know why this review acts like he didn't.
    - Applejinx 5y ago
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
"Look at the incentives and I will show you the outcome" It's easy to make LeMay look more evil than he was. Once you've got the villain you need a hero if you want to tell a good story. We're talking an author someone who does a layman level history podcast here. You can't expect him to fight over facts like a lawyer. That's just not what you do when you produce that kind of content. He's gonna find a bunch of facts, point the ones he likes in the direction of the point he wants to make and then turn them loose. And if the result is a good story he's gonna sell a whole bunch of books to the kinds of people who listen to his podcast. It's a shame that making a mess out of history is a good business model but the fact of the matter is that it is.
fighterpilot 5y ago
The Igon Value Problem: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Igon_Value_Problem https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Igon_Value_Problem
- yboris 5y ago
  Classic - thank you for sharing!
- tptacek 5y ago
  Every time someone posts this, I wonder if they'd be able to solve some basic (albeit symbolic) eigenvalue problems. Could you? Like just some 2x2 problems that you can't just plug into Wolfram Alpha? It seems a little odd to hold a journalist to a standard software engineers themselves don't generally meet.
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    The point of the "Igon Value Problem" is to have a term to describe popsci writers who create oversimplistic and overconfident narratives of complex domains that they know little about, often making basic errors and leading readers astray. Whether or not I know about eigenvalues myself is a bit besides the point (although, yes, I did learn that in college).
    - tptacek 5y ago
      Well, we're on a message board, so of course you're going to say you know what an eigenvalue is. That's the point of asking if you could handle some simple matrix questions. :P
      - fighterpilot 5y ago
        I still don't understand the point of asking me that. I'm not the one writing books or articles in an authoritative tone on topics I know little about. If I were to write an article about math with glaring errors, then your question would make more sense. Until then, my linear algebra ability isn't relevant.
slg 5y ago
>The only issue is that Gladwell’s account doesn’t withstand serious scrutiny. As a piece of writing, The Bomber Mafia is engaging. As a work of history, it borders on reckless. Setting aside the numerous errors of fact and interpretation, Gladwell consistently cherry-picks from the historical record. Wittingly or not, he omits or downplays evidence that undermines the very premise of the book. Sub out history for science in the above paragraph and it is the same criticism that Gladwell has been receiving for literally decades. The guy is a good writer and storyteller but he seemingly prioritizes good writing and story over telling the most honest story. That isn't an unusual trait among pop-non-fiction writers. The reason they become popular is what they write is interesting and it is easier to make things interesting if you are a little loose with the truth.
- mdeck_ 5y ago
  > The guy is a good writer and storyteller but he seemingly prioritizes good writing and story over telling the most honest story. That isn't an unusual trait among pop-non-fiction writers. It’s not fair at all to cast Malcolm Gladwell as typical of pop nonfiction writers—there are tons of great and serious writers in the genre. It’s truly a shame that Malcolm Gladwell, an utter hack, has been consistently publishing garbage for decades and that he has such a wide audience.
  - slg 5y ago
    I'm not going to disagree with the merits of your point, but I do want to provide clarification that I think there is a gap between "not unusual" and "typical". I think the former means it isn't rare while the later means it applies to most people. To make up a number, if this applied to 20% of people it would be both "not unusual" and "not typical".
  - quadrangle 5y ago
    Despite the undeniably pattern of problematic framings (particularly how Gladwell invites readers to feel that they now have the answers as opposed to the scientific mindset of now feeling that they have so many more questions), I don't think "utter hack" is fair. Gladwell is not only a superb storyteller, he's sincerely interested in learning himself, has intriguing ideas… it's sloppy (almost in a Gladwellian manner) to be angry about the problems with his approach and then just insist that the conclusion is that his stuff is just garbage and he's just a hack.
dlivingston 5y ago
I quite like Malcolm Gladwell. Here's why: I view empirical truth as having layers. There is one objective truth, of course, but there are higher-order concentric rings of abstractions above those that aren't strictly true but serve as an accurate enough first-order approximation of the truth. The clichéd example of this would be the Bohr model of atoms being the first "ring" of truth, and quantum mechanics being a second or third "ring". Another example would be "everything revolves around the earth" -> "everything revolves around the sun" -> "Newtonian gravity" -> "Einsteinian general relativity". As a first-order approximation of the truth, Gladwell is fine. There are serious criticisms of him in this article that may cause me to rethink this, but as long as they aren't full-on manipulations of reality, I view them as a useful entry point into a subject. Nuanced and rigorous history requires careful and objective study to truly understand. Gladwell, on the other hand, I can read in the bathtub with a cold beer. He's fun in a way that the more academic approach to history necessarily can't be (unless there is a Feynman-esque character writing history books that I'm not aware of?)
- jmkni 5y ago
  I like Adam Curtis for the same reason
  - mjburgess 5y ago
    Curtis is trying to create a certain sort of dream state in which the free association of ideas takes place and you reframe your perspective on society. I'd hesitate to call it even something that could be true. It's more like an abstract painting. I went through quite a hostile phase, as it's clearly masquerading as something it isn't. It's more a work of aesthetic-political creation, than any kind of "history". It's a made up history of a possible world view possible dead people might have had; for the sake of saying something about our world views today.
    - mopsi 5y ago
      > It's more like an abstract painting. Or a music video: Massive Attack x Adam Curtis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e3I1mLc3RM&t=54s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e3I1mLc3RM&t=54s
protomyth 5y ago
How do you have a book about WWII bomber strategy and not have Billy Mitchell in it? His influence is pretty large.
- gre 5y ago
  Billy Mitchell the general, not the gamer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell
  - protomyth 5y ago
    Why would anyone think the gamer is important to this discussion?
    - gre 5y ago
      He's the only one I'd heard of.
jonstewart 5y ago
Judge Posner took down Gladwell years ago. I periodically reread this: https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/posner-reviews-blink https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/posner-reviews-blink
cubano 5y ago
Isn't ALL written history somewhat revisionist? Well it sure is hard to tell because, of course, I wasn't there of course, but isn't that exactly the problem here? For my entire life I've heard the bot mot that "History is written by the victorious"...well doesn't that mean at its base level that ALL of it bathes in its own bullshit? I like Malcom's writing and his pod...and at least he has the honesty to call it "Revisionist History" as he is obviously telling us that HERE, yes, narrative story might win out over historical accuracy (which, once again, we have been taught is BS anyway). Why shouldn't non-textbook history reflect the shades and biases of its author? As long as its well written and presents fair reflections upon this history, why should the author be pummeled by critics for doing so? Too many questions and not enough answers...as usual.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  That's not what "revisionist" means in the context of history. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism
Animats 5y ago
"What does he describe upon setting foot in this solemn space, a site dedicated to the very subject of his book? Himself." So he's writing like a blogger.
meroes 5y ago
Personal anecdote about a book of his: I had a lunch interview and the CEO winced when I quoted What the Dog Saw, and corrected me using their actual experience running a large corporation. I think about not having to get along with coworkers, and the CEO said that was nonsense. *No I didn't say I don't get along. They asked what books I was reading
greedo 5y ago
It's not that Gladwell just place loose with his facts, conveniently leaving out things that contradict his central thesis. It's that he's often just flat out wrong. So wrong that he doesn't even realize how he blows up his own credibility: "The sole thing the Marianas had going for them was that they were within range of Japan. But even that was an exaggeration. The truth is that they were within range only under perfect conditions. To reach Japan, a B-29 first needed to be loaded up with twenty thousand pounds of extra fuel. And because that made the plane dangerously overweight, each B-29 also needed a ferocious tailwind to lift it off the runway. This was as crazy a situation as anyone faced throughout the whole war."
- aidenn0 5y ago
  IS the horribly wrong thing that an overweight plane would want a headwind to takeoff, or something else?
  - greedo 5y ago
    Yes. It demonstrates his complete lack of understanding how flight works. Lift is generated by air moving from the front of a plane's wing towards the rear. Having a tailwind reduces the amount of air traveling in this direction, reducing lift. Generally, planes prefer to land and take off into the wind. Tailwinds are nice once you're already in flight, since they give you free speed.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      I think this is a bad reason to worry. Knowing how 'lift' works is basically irrelevant to anything in the rest of the story. Over 500 pages, you're going to get things wrong. The important facts of that para related to the strategic importance of the Island. The minute details of 'why lift works' are not really relevant. What's relevant is that "The islands importance is as an airstrip/base and even then it's barely 'in range'".
      - cpleppert 5y ago
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chmod600 5y ago
Moral question: Being objective and moral has lead to amazing amounts of peace, cooperation, and prosperity. But I always think about an example that seems to say you can be too objective and maybe too moral: Let's say a wolf is hungry and wants to eat you. Your options are (1) let it eat you; (2) run away to safety; or (3) shoot the wolf. No matter what, something will die. Either you die, another prey animal dies, or the wold dies (of starvation or being shot). Being too objective means you will be the one that dies, because you can't find a reason to take an action like shooting the wolf or running away. I have a hard time getting past this example when it comes to questions of war and morality. If there is little cost to you, of course it's easy to make the moral choice and avoid needless deaths of your enemies. But if the cost starts to become significant (e.g. protracted bloody war), then you need to make the choice that's right for you and your allies. Right?
- totetsu 5y ago
  The example you give of the hungry wolf, and the use of fire bombing on civilian cities are not equivalent moral problems, because one is much more complicated than the other.
barry27 5y ago
"What does he describe upon setting foot in this solemn space, a site dedicated to the very subject of his book? Himself." I think that sums it up. There is little point in reading anything written by Malcolm Gladwell.
lurquer 5y ago
I saw Blink in the bookstore. My gut feeling, just looking at the cover, was that it would suck. Didn’t buy it.
- barry27 5y ago
  whenever someone says they judged a book by its cover i have to assume they're being ironic
99_00 5y ago
https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/ https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/
screye 5y ago
My experience with Gladwell has been a positive one, but I would never consider him the source/expert on anything. I put him between John Oliver (cherry picked truths veering on lies) and Nate Silver (will have an opinion, but will separate it from the source data). He tries to reach a conclusion through honest means and good research. However, his narration will skip over / bend the specifics to make the journey to the conclusion more digestible. He has been an excellent entry point for a lot of my peers who are less inclined to read textbooks or non-fiction novels. Similarly, his podcast is always interesting enough to keep the attention of a random person despite covering what they would've otherwise not been interested in. There is something to be said for that skill.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
> "The only issue is that Gladwell’s account doesn’t withstand serious scrutiny. As a piece of writing, The Bomber Mafia is engaging. As a work of history, it borders on reckless." So it's classic MG? He's a good easy - often feel good - read. However, the pattern that's too clear is he rarely supplies a counter argumemt or counter view. He takes his position and then plays pile on with "the facts."
secabeen 5y ago
For more on this topic, I recommend _Bombing to Win_ by Robert Pape. It's an older book now, but it does a pretty good job of skewering the idea that you can cheaply achieve military goals by imposing suffering on civilians: https://www.amazon.com/Bombing-Win-Coercion-Cornell-Security/dp/0801483115 https://www.amazon.com/Bombing-Win-Coercion-Cornell-Security...
js-celebrity 5y ago
He has yet to apologize for popularizing the broken window theory.
IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
A book about the airforce does not mention the father of the modern US airforce. In contrast, the article puts him in front and centre. OK. Mark me as sold. Article is dead on. Book is pop history at its worst. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell
dcre 5y ago
Amusing bit from another review of the book: "There are infinite kinds of irresponsible books that a well-credentialed media insider can write. First are the total farces of fact. ... A second variety of irresponsible books are those whose primary purpose is to market their authors ... And then there are books whose fusion of factual inaccuracy and moral sophistry is so total that they can only be written by Malcolm Gladwell." https://thebaffler.com/latest/narrative-napalm-kulwin https://thebaffler.com/latest/narrative-napalm-kulwin
oregano 5y ago
A few years back Gladwell put out a podcast with Rick Rubin. The unlikely duo struck me as interesting so I listened to an episode where they discussed a brand new song by Eminem (which Rubin produced). I have nothing against Eminem and don’t want to sound like a snob but the way Gladwell gushed over this (super cheesy) Eminem track seriously tainted his reputation for me.
geodel 5y ago
Ah, I do not know if it is surprising if 250 pages book does not contain details and perspectives equivalent of 250 tomes on this subject.
totetsu 5y ago
If anyone wants to have a little fun* down a rabbit hole, you can find some before and after aerial photos of Japanese cities on the geological societies web page. https://mapps.gsi.go.jp/maplibSearch.do#1 https://mapps.gsi.go.jp/maplibSearch.do#1
ggm 5y ago
I suggest people think about reading Solly Zuckerman "from apes to warlords" which includes his time doing statistical and operations research analysis on bombing. He didn't always make friends in Bomber Command.

242 points by diodorus 5y ago

I miss his old work, when it was focused more on pop-culture, and less on idealism, and politics. The podcast was going really well but as soon as he started going off on politics I lost interest really quick.

SQueeeeeL 5y ago
I love the idea that any history/philosophy can be divorced from politics. Like, I only enjoy hearing this human beings thoughts and opinions, but only if they exist in this narrow band of what I deem acceptable. His ideas on satire are extremely valuable IMO, explicitly because of the political nature of his arguments. It critiques the inability of modern social systems inability critique those in power, and skillfully intermixes the politics of the time to enhance his point (that part about A Wonderful Country is beautiful, how an extremely political point can be made through satire, leagues beyond SNL)
- mejari 5y ago
  I think there's a valid distinction between "using the politics of the time to better understand history" and "pushing personal politics through the teaching of history"
jedimastert 5y ago
Yeah, I kinda dipped when I felt like there were more opinions than history. Like, I understand that all history is colored by the person telling it, and that was kinda the whole idea behind Revisionist History in the first place, but I felt like he moved from highlighting less known aspects of history to highlighting basically where he thought history had gone wrong.
Tactician_mark 5y ago
Was there a time when Gladwell wasn't political? The Tipping Point was his first book, and it helped popularize broken windows policing.
- sjg007 5y ago
  That style of policing was popular before Gladwell. It was Giuliani who really doubled down on it in NYC as the exemplar. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory It is also known as stop and frisk. This type of policing has also been adopted to traffic stops as well and arguably has lead to warrior cop policing. Gladwell discusses the implications of this in Talking to Strangers. So if you want a perspective on guns, gun violence, policing from the 1970s until today, I recommend it.

Ericson2314 5y ago

Esssh. How many times does Malcolm Gladwell need to be exposed as a fraud before he looses his pulpit? (So much for post-truth being a mere problem for the rabble...)

arkaic 5y ago
Twitter style comment right here.
- groby_b 5y ago
  There isn't much else to say. Malcom Gladwell is an utter hack. The mainstream media refuses to acknowledge that and glorifies everything he says. Meanwhile, pretty much anybody whose field has been touched by Gladwell reports that his account of their field is utterly uninformed, lacking nuance, and shaped to reach a foregone conclusion. What more is there?
  - jfoutz 5y ago
    Malcom Gladwell writes clearly and persuasively. I don't believe he uses his rhetoric to deceive, I don't think it's full on sophistry. That said, he clearly won't let the facts get in the way of a good story. As much as I want truth, evidence and proof to have one true meaning, the words really mean different things to different people. Heck, they mean different things to the same person in different contexts. Malcom Gladwell (in my humble opinion) is very good at making political arguments, not scientist arguments. They sound true. They engage in intellectual and emotional ways. I have, with multiple Gladwell books, been led down the garden path. But golly it's a pretty and enjoyable walk. And eventually that walk leads me to other interesting stuff, like _thinking fast and slow_. I guess, it's useful to me to read stories dressed up as science (kinda). Otherwise, how could I tell if the science I'm reading is just a story?
    - lubujackson 5y ago
      It is hard to read this as a positive thing. You are basically describing a con-man (or more neutrally, a politician) who is skilled at convincing people of things through stories that are not factually accurate but feel accurate - "Truthiness" as Jon Stewart called it. At best, it is a shortcut to convince groups of people of a point but it is the opposite of informative - people come away with bad information, not partial information and curiosity to learn more. He is specifically disliked because he is selling the "take-aways" as knowledge when they are the opposite, then says he is just a storyteller - which is good and fine except he is marketed and digested as a layman's source of truth. Which is why we have people walking around thinking they can be a concert-grade pianist with 10,000 hours of practice even though the argument falls apart with the slightest analysis. If Hacker News caters to curious "hacker mindset" types I think Gladwell is the opposite of curiosity: insights without discussion or understanding.

patwolf 5y ago

I enjoy Revisionist History, but I have learned to take everything he says with a grain of salt. He throws out much of the nuance of history in order to neatly meld it with his narrative. The Boston Tea Party episode, for example, tried to paint the revolution as a bunch of rich smugglers upset about losing business. That may have been a small part of it, but it definitely is not the whole story. I'm afraid to ever mention anything I heard from him in casual conversation because someone more knowledgeable would probably call me out.

xapata 5y ago
You're right in general; Gladwell is often wrong, but that's actually a pretty good take on the Boston Tea Party.
NullInvictus 5y ago
I think Gladwell cares about history, and he cares about story, but if (as is often the case in history) he has to choose one at the expense of the other, it is going to be _story_ that he chooses every single time. As an overly broad generalization, Gladwell is at heart a journalist, not a historian (even though he has a bachelor's in history). I enjoy listening to Revisionist history and reading some of his books, because some things in history are revealed by trying to form some kind of narrative (e.g., Historical Materialism), but he's not telling you history. He's forming a story from history. But I think his work is often an excellent stepping off point to real history texts, and it sometimes gets you to think about the second-order effect of things (his episode on Brown v. Board was extremely interesting). Ironically the Boston Tea Party episode was also the one that broke me and made me bring a lot more grains of salt to my experience of his work. I think it's one of his worst episodes, and one where he tips his hand a little too far and breaks the illusion for anyone who has even casually read any serious works on the period. It's a _piece_ as you said, but it's an incredible oversimplification.
- sjg007 5y ago
  Most of history is a story written by the victors and what has survived. Unless there is primary evidence and even then most of that contains interpretation. But I'm interested in what do you think the Boston Tea Party episode gets wrong?

imNotTheProb 5y ago

Blink- "you can figure out a person's intentions from split second facial expressions" Talking to strangers- "everyone and their culture is different, it's impossible to know if someone is lying"

feintruled 5y ago
Yeah, Blink was the first and last of his books I read. Nice anecdotes but it struck me as nothing more than saying "Your gut feeling is right, except when it's wrong"
- ksd482 5y ago
  Same!! I watched his TED talk on David and Goliath story and I thought he was interesting. Then I picked up Blink. 25 pages in, I realized he was full of shit.
- Applejinx 5y ago
  More like, your intuitive jump related to areas in which you are experienced and expert, can and does give you conclusions way way quicker than it gives you justifications. Hoving looking at a fake sculpture and instantly going 'NOPE' is not a Joe Average reaction, but draws on lots of experience. The story of gamblers giving stress reactions to unfamiliar and dangerous card games is GAMBLERS. Your gut feeling has nothing to do with it. What are you so expert at, that you can just glance and you'll know? (as in, more than would be justified by the lack of analysis and prolonged exposure) Being able to plausibly form hugely accelerated judgements and have them check out, is interesting. It's also plausible to me that few people build up that much expertise, to be able to do that. But for those who do… and it can be in any field, from any person… it's an interesting perspective.
CalChris 5y ago
Talking To Strangers was a choice for Zoom book club I was in during the shutdown. I was looking forward to it a little since I recognized but didn't know the name. I couldn't make my way through it and dropped out. He has a New Yorker writing style but without having anything to say.

greggman3 5y ago

A much better account of WW2 in the Pacific is the latest Hardcore History series. The 6 part "Supernova in the East" https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/ https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/

mayneack 5y ago
Carlin actually had Gladwell on recently to talk about the book. He wasn't anywhere close to as critical as this review, however. https://pca.st/5rvqo9kz https://pca.st/5rvqo9kz
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  > He wasn't anywhere close to as critical as this review, however. When someone with a much (much!) bigger following than you parachutes into your field and joins you on your platform (where you are currently covering the same topic), you maybe withhold your most severe criticism of their work.
billfruit 5y ago
Barbara Tuchman's "Stilwell and the American Experience in China" is a good booklength treatment of WW2 in Asia, also prominently featuring a prominent proponent of air warfare, General Chennault.
afterburner 5y ago
Carlin has also been criticized for being loose with history in favour of story. Carlin's podcast series are much, much longer than Gladwell's typical podcast treatments though, so at least it lets him include a lot more details.
- triceratops 5y ago
  > Carlin has also been criticized for being loose with history in favour of story. How so? He seems to be pretty upfront in talking about his sources, quoting from them, and saying repeatedly that he's a journalist and not a historian.

openasocket 5y ago

There's also some more nitty-gritty critiques I found in this thread: https://twitter.com/Alan_Allport/status/1395770118785966086 https://twitter.com/Alan_Allport/status/1395770118785966086 . And also I found this review interesting as well: https://thebaffler.com/latest/narrative-napalm-kulwin https://thebaffler.com/latest/narrative-napalm-kulwin

afterburner 5y ago

It's not like Gladwell doesn't criticize LeMay. He even accuses the entire US strategic command of waving away the responsibility of considering the morality of such a brutal firebombing campaign. I didn't come away from the audiobook thinking LeMay had "won" even the battle, let alone the war (meaning ultimately precision bombing has won the argument in modern times). Granted, I already knew plenty about this before, but my impression in the end from Gladwell was that both Hansel and LeMay were wrong in different ways, just that LeMay's aggressive firebombing looked like it was "doing something" to the higher ups. The technology of the time simply did not allow the precision bombing approach to "look" like it was even "doing something" (and it was certainly failing by its own primary metric, hitting the target). Indiscriminate bombing is easy, so you can point at photos and say you succeeded in doing it. Gladwell of course simplifies it a lot and wraps it up in a bow, because his strength is telling a story, not conducting a detailed analysis. At the very least, perhaps a lot of people will become aware of these events and be made to think about them. Fact is, no one really knows if the firebombing hastened Japanese surrender or convinced the Japanese population that they really had lost. Maybe it did, and maybe it was important. Or maybe not. And it was certainly horrifying. Gladwell doesn't dwell enough on the uncertainty, but he doesn't forget to mention the moral issues.

escape_goat 5y ago
It is a shame that nobody really knows the impact of this thing that was experienced by millions of people and extensively documented by the Japanese and subsequently studied by Japanese historians as well as all historians of the war and of East Asia everywhere. I guess it will always be the case that perhaps we achieved ends that offer some justification to the means we employed.
- afterburner 5y ago
  Gladwell did describe the horrific nature of the firestorms in detail. I don't know why this review acts like he didn't.
  - Applejinx 5y ago

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

"Look at the incentives and I will show you the outcome" It's easy to make LeMay look more evil than he was. Once you've got the villain you need a hero if you want to tell a good story. We're talking an author someone who does a layman level history podcast here. You can't expect him to fight over facts like a lawyer. That's just not what you do when you produce that kind of content. He's gonna find a bunch of facts, point the ones he likes in the direction of the point he wants to make and then turn them loose. And if the result is a good story he's gonna sell a whole bunch of books to the kinds of people who listen to his podcast. It's a shame that making a mess out of history is a good business model but the fact of the matter is that it is.

fighterpilot 5y ago

The Igon Value Problem: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Igon_Value_Problem https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Igon_Value_Problem

yboris 5y ago
Classic - thank you for sharing!
tptacek 5y ago
Every time someone posts this, I wonder if they'd be able to solve some basic (albeit symbolic) eigenvalue problems. Could you? Like just some 2x2 problems that you can't just plug into Wolfram Alpha? It seems a little odd to hold a journalist to a standard software engineers themselves don't generally meet.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  The point of the "Igon Value Problem" is to have a term to describe popsci writers who create oversimplistic and overconfident narratives of complex domains that they know little about, often making basic errors and leading readers astray. Whether or not I know about eigenvalues myself is a bit besides the point (although, yes, I did learn that in college).
  - tptacek 5y ago
    Well, we're on a message board, so of course you're going to say you know what an eigenvalue is. That's the point of asking if you could handle some simple matrix questions. :P
    - fighterpilot 5y ago
      I still don't understand the point of asking me that. I'm not the one writing books or articles in an authoritative tone on topics I know little about. If I were to write an article about math with glaring errors, then your question would make more sense. Until then, my linear algebra ability isn't relevant.

slg 5y ago

>The only issue is that Gladwell’s account doesn’t withstand serious scrutiny. As a piece of writing, The Bomber Mafia is engaging. As a work of history, it borders on reckless. Setting aside the numerous errors of fact and interpretation, Gladwell consistently cherry-picks from the historical record. Wittingly or not, he omits or downplays evidence that undermines the very premise of the book. Sub out history for science in the above paragraph and it is the same criticism that Gladwell has been receiving for literally decades. The guy is a good writer and storyteller but he seemingly prioritizes good writing and story over telling the most honest story. That isn't an unusual trait among pop-non-fiction writers. The reason they become popular is what they write is interesting and it is easier to make things interesting if you are a little loose with the truth.

mdeck_ 5y ago
> The guy is a good writer and storyteller but he seemingly prioritizes good writing and story over telling the most honest story. That isn't an unusual trait among pop-non-fiction writers. It’s not fair at all to cast Malcolm Gladwell as typical of pop nonfiction writers—there are tons of great and serious writers in the genre. It’s truly a shame that Malcolm Gladwell, an utter hack, has been consistently publishing garbage for decades and that he has such a wide audience.
- slg 5y ago
  I'm not going to disagree with the merits of your point, but I do want to provide clarification that I think there is a gap between "not unusual" and "typical". I think the former means it isn't rare while the later means it applies to most people. To make up a number, if this applied to 20% of people it would be both "not unusual" and "not typical".
- quadrangle 5y ago
  Despite the undeniably pattern of problematic framings (particularly how Gladwell invites readers to feel that they now have the answers as opposed to the scientific mindset of now feeling that they have so many more questions), I don't think "utter hack" is fair. Gladwell is not only a superb storyteller, he's sincerely interested in learning himself, has intriguing ideas… it's sloppy (almost in a Gladwellian manner) to be angry about the problems with his approach and then just insist that the conclusion is that his stuff is just garbage and he's just a hack.

dlivingston 5y ago

I quite like Malcolm Gladwell. Here's why: I view empirical truth as having layers. There is one objective truth, of course, but there are higher-order concentric rings of abstractions above those that aren't strictly true but serve as an accurate enough first-order approximation of the truth. The clichéd example of this would be the Bohr model of atoms being the first "ring" of truth, and quantum mechanics being a second or third "ring". Another example would be "everything revolves around the earth" -> "everything revolves around the sun" -> "Newtonian gravity" -> "Einsteinian general relativity". As a first-order approximation of the truth, Gladwell is fine. There are serious criticisms of him in this article that may cause me to rethink this, but as long as they aren't full-on manipulations of reality, I view them as a useful entry point into a subject. Nuanced and rigorous history requires careful and objective study to truly understand. Gladwell, on the other hand, I can read in the bathtub with a cold beer. He's fun in a way that the more academic approach to history necessarily can't be (unless there is a Feynman-esque character writing history books that I'm not aware of?)

jmkni 5y ago
I like Adam Curtis for the same reason
- mjburgess 5y ago
  Curtis is trying to create a certain sort of dream state in which the free association of ideas takes place and you reframe your perspective on society. I'd hesitate to call it even something that could be true. It's more like an abstract painting. I went through quite a hostile phase, as it's clearly masquerading as something it isn't. It's more a work of aesthetic-political creation, than any kind of "history". It's a made up history of a possible world view possible dead people might have had; for the sake of saying something about our world views today.
  - mopsi 5y ago
    > It's more like an abstract painting. Or a music video: Massive Attack x Adam Curtis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e3I1mLc3RM&t=54s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e3I1mLc3RM&t=54s

protomyth 5y ago

How do you have a book about WWII bomber strategy and not have Billy Mitchell in it? His influence is pretty large.

gre 5y ago
Billy Mitchell the general, not the gamer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell
- protomyth 5y ago
  Why would anyone think the gamer is important to this discussion?
  - gre 5y ago
    He's the only one I'd heard of.

jonstewart 5y ago

Judge Posner took down Gladwell years ago. I periodically reread this: https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/posner-reviews-blink https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/posner-reviews-blink

cubano 5y ago

Isn't ALL written history somewhat revisionist? Well it sure is hard to tell because, of course, I wasn't there of course, but isn't that exactly the problem here? For my entire life I've heard the bot mot that "History is written by the victorious"...well doesn't that mean at its base level that ALL of it bathes in its own bullshit? I like Malcom's writing and his pod...and at least he has the honesty to call it "Revisionist History" as he is obviously telling us that HERE, yes, narrative story might win out over historical accuracy (which, once again, we have been taught is BS anyway). Why shouldn't non-textbook history reflect the shades and biases of its author? As long as its well written and presents fair reflections upon this history, why should the author be pummeled by critics for doing so? Too many questions and not enough answers...as usual.

aidenn0 5y ago
That's not what "revisionist" means in the context of history. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism

Animats 5y ago

"What does he describe upon setting foot in this solemn space, a site dedicated to the very subject of his book? Himself." So he's writing like a blogger.

meroes 5y ago

Personal anecdote about a book of his: I had a lunch interview and the CEO winced when I quoted What the Dog Saw, and corrected me using their actual experience running a large corporation. I think about not having to get along with coworkers, and the CEO said that was nonsense. *No I didn't say I don't get along. They asked what books I was reading

greedo 5y ago

It's not that Gladwell just place loose with his facts, conveniently leaving out things that contradict his central thesis. It's that he's often just flat out wrong. So wrong that he doesn't even realize how he blows up his own credibility: "The sole thing the Marianas had going for them was that they were within range of Japan. But even that was an exaggeration. The truth is that they were within range only under perfect conditions. To reach Japan, a B-29 first needed to be loaded up with twenty thousand pounds of extra fuel. And because that made the plane dangerously overweight, each B-29 also needed a ferocious tailwind to lift it off the runway. This was as crazy a situation as anyone faced throughout the whole war."

aidenn0 5y ago
IS the horribly wrong thing that an overweight plane would want a headwind to takeoff, or something else?
- greedo 5y ago
  Yes. It demonstrates his complete lack of understanding how flight works. Lift is generated by air moving from the front of a plane's wing towards the rear. Having a tailwind reduces the amount of air traveling in this direction, reducing lift. Generally, planes prefer to land and take off into the wind. Tailwinds are nice once you're already in flight, since they give you free speed.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    I think this is a bad reason to worry. Knowing how 'lift' works is basically irrelevant to anything in the rest of the story. Over 500 pages, you're going to get things wrong. The important facts of that para related to the strategic importance of the Island. The minute details of 'why lift works' are not really relevant. What's relevant is that "The islands importance is as an airstrip/base and even then it's barely 'in range'".
    - cpleppert 5y ago

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chmod600 5y ago

Moral question: Being objective and moral has lead to amazing amounts of peace, cooperation, and prosperity. But I always think about an example that seems to say you can be too objective and maybe too moral: Let's say a wolf is hungry and wants to eat you. Your options are (1) let it eat you; (2) run away to safety; or (3) shoot the wolf. No matter what, something will die. Either you die, another prey animal dies, or the wold dies (of starvation or being shot). Being too objective means you will be the one that dies, because you can't find a reason to take an action like shooting the wolf or running away. I have a hard time getting past this example when it comes to questions of war and morality. If there is little cost to you, of course it's easy to make the moral choice and avoid needless deaths of your enemies. But if the cost starts to become significant (e.g. protracted bloody war), then you need to make the choice that's right for you and your allies. Right?

totetsu 5y ago
The example you give of the hungry wolf, and the use of fire bombing on civilian cities are not equivalent moral problems, because one is much more complicated than the other.

barry27 5y ago

"What does he describe upon setting foot in this solemn space, a site dedicated to the very subject of his book? Himself." I think that sums it up. There is little point in reading anything written by Malcolm Gladwell.

lurquer 5y ago

I saw Blink in the bookstore. My gut feeling, just looking at the cover, was that it would suck. Didn’t buy it.

barry27 5y ago
whenever someone says they judged a book by its cover i have to assume they're being ironic

99_00 5y ago

https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/ https://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/

screye 5y ago

My experience with Gladwell has been a positive one, but I would never consider him the source/expert on anything. I put him between John Oliver (cherry picked truths veering on lies) and Nate Silver (will have an opinion, but will separate it from the source data). He tries to reach a conclusion through honest means and good research. However, his narration will skip over / bend the specifics to make the journey to the conclusion more digestible. He has been an excellent entry point for a lot of my peers who are less inclined to read textbooks or non-fiction novels. Similarly, his podcast is always interesting enough to keep the attention of a random person despite covering what they would've otherwise not been interested in. There is something to be said for that skill.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

> "The only issue is that Gladwell’s account doesn’t withstand serious scrutiny. As a piece of writing, The Bomber Mafia is engaging. As a work of history, it borders on reckless." So it's classic MG? He's a good easy - often feel good - read. However, the pattern that's too clear is he rarely supplies a counter argumemt or counter view. He takes his position and then plays pile on with "the facts."

secabeen 5y ago

For more on this topic, I recommend _Bombing to Win_ by Robert Pape. It's an older book now, but it does a pretty good job of skewering the idea that you can cheaply achieve military goals by imposing suffering on civilians: https://www.amazon.com/Bombing-Win-Coercion-Cornell-Security/dp/0801483115 https://www.amazon.com/Bombing-Win-Coercion-Cornell-Security...

js-celebrity 5y ago

He has yet to apologize for popularizing the broken window theory.

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago

A book about the airforce does not mention the father of the modern US airforce. In contrast, the article puts him in front and centre. OK. Mark me as sold. Article is dead on. Book is pop history at its worst. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell

dcre 5y ago

Amusing bit from another review of the book: "There are infinite kinds of irresponsible books that a well-credentialed media insider can write. First are the total farces of fact. ... A second variety of irresponsible books are those whose primary purpose is to market their authors ... And then there are books whose fusion of factual inaccuracy and moral sophistry is so total that they can only be written by Malcolm Gladwell." https://thebaffler.com/latest/narrative-napalm-kulwin https://thebaffler.com/latest/narrative-napalm-kulwin

oregano 5y ago

A few years back Gladwell put out a podcast with Rick Rubin. The unlikely duo struck me as interesting so I listened to an episode where they discussed a brand new song by Eminem (which Rubin produced). I have nothing against Eminem and don’t want to sound like a snob but the way Gladwell gushed over this (super cheesy) Eminem track seriously tainted his reputation for me.

geodel 5y ago

Ah, I do not know if it is surprising if 250 pages book does not contain details and perspectives equivalent of 250 tomes on this subject.

totetsu 5y ago

If anyone wants to have a little fun* down a rabbit hole, you can find some before and after aerial photos of Japanese cities on the geological societies web page. https://mapps.gsi.go.jp/maplibSearch.do#1 https://mapps.gsi.go.jp/maplibSearch.do#1

ggm 5y ago

I suggest people think about reading Solly Zuckerman "from apes to warlords" which includes his time doing statistical and operations research analysis on bombing. He didn't always make friends in Bomber Command.