What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009)

A lovely book of essays that make you think - my favourite were about Enron, both the topic on rising stars and on Enron's collapse. I also appreciated the explanation on false positives in surveillance... how do you determine if a threat or warning should be taken seriously when you get thousands and thousands of them?

A couple of them were forgettable (to me) such as the essay about the tv pitch guys or the one that featured Cesar Milan. But, every essay left me thinking about the way the world works and how humans view it.

The writing, while dense, is concise, at times witty. This is not light reading - but neither is it difficult. For those looking for a book of essays about different topics that makes you think -this is the book for you. ( )

This book just doesn't measure up to the other books in the series. In the other books you are introduced to a scenario with short stories to discuss it. In this book you are introduced to a scenario which drags on ad nauseum for pages. The histories provided in each section are just TOO LONG and TOO in-depth. You just get way more information than is necessary. I usually love non-fiction but this book reads like a long historical monograph. In a word BORING. Pick up one of the author's other books instead. ( )

I haven’t read any of his full length books, but I really enjoyed this collection of essays from The New Yorker.

It’s like having a conversation with someone who thinks creatively and is open minded. It’s not so much that he’s telling you how things are, it’s him saying "let’s look at this a different way, what if it’s really X instead of Y". In that way it doesn’t really matter so much weather he’s right or wrong about a point, it’s still an interesting discussion. I probably liked it more because I did agree with him most of the time though.

All of the chapters were at least interesting in some way, some of them I will be thinking about from now on. Unfortunately some of my least favorite chapters were at the beginning. The discussions about hair dye and ketchup were kind of like Andy Rooney segments on 60 minutes, there were things I didn’t know and had never thought about the subjects, but I wasn’t sure at all what his bigger point was. If you read this book and aren’t loving it, keep going. ( )

Malcom Gladwell used up his best material in 'Tipping Point' and 'The Outliers'. This books has too many sports reference for me to relate or care about. The best chapter was about Ceasar Milan - the rest? Just endless fluff. ( )

I only read a couple stories in this because it just wasn't conducive to picking it up between other books. That was the main reason I checked it out, so maybe for another time.