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What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by…
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What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (original 2009; edition 2009)

by Malcolm Gladwell

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5,3011331,995 (3.79)104
Brings together, for the first time, the best of Gladwell's writing from The New Yorker in the past decade, including: the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill; the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz; spotlighting Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen; and the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer." Gladwell also explores intelligence tests, ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias," and why it was that everyone in Silicon Valley once tripped over themselves to hire the same college graduate.… (more)
Member:jwcs81
Title:What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures
Authors:Malcolm Gladwell
Info:Little, Brown and Company (2009), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 432 pages
Collections:Your library
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Tags:J.W.C.S. Library

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What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell (Author) (2009)

  1. 00
    The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading: A Comprehensive Guide to the Most Persuasive Psychological Manipulation Technique in the World by Ian Rowland (Anonymous user)
    Anonymous user: If you've read Cold Reading or What the Dog Saw, you're likely to be interested in human nature and how people affect other people. Both reveal stunning insights in both these domains.
  2. 11
    Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman (sanddancer)
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» See also 104 mentions

English (130)  Hungarian (1)  Finnish (1)  Dutch (1)  All languages (133)
Showing 1-5 of 130 (next | show all)
Gladwell works with great material, every chapter a different subject plus he has a real knack for approaching his material from oblique angles. Lots of food for thought here. Jan 2010 ( )
  BBrookes | Dec 13, 2023 |
Excellent collection of essays that originally appeared in the New Yorker. Gladwell is a wonderful writer who has a knack for finding fascinating angles to seemingly mundane things. ( )
  jumblejim | Aug 26, 2023 |
Gladwell's writing is captivating and insightful as always; however, What the Dog Saw lacks a unifying theme, in contrast to Gladwell's early books. Since one of Gladwell's strengths is the connection of different entities on the basis of shared phenomena, this lack prevents What The Dog Saw from being a true masterpiece. Nevertheless, an enjoyable read. ( )
  settingshadow | Aug 19, 2023 |
Enjoyed most of it, but skipped a lot of the articles of no interest to me. The John Rock article was probably the favourite of the whole book. I like his writing to an extent, except for his repetition. Not bad, nothing amazing.
  fleshed | Jul 16, 2023 |
A collection of the author's essays and reflections on cabbages and kings, things trivial and significant, and on the nature of rational and irrational knowledge and understanding. The collection starts of on a rather unpromising note, with a piece on the salesmanship involved in developing and selling kitchen implements, that is so entrenched in America, that it is almost incomprehensible to readers from other parts of the world.It gets more interesting toward the middle of the book, dealing with the nature of understanding and problem solving in various fields. An engrossing and enlightening read. ( )
  Dilip-Kumar | Jul 10, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 130 (next | show all)
The themes of the collection are a good way to characterize Gladwell himself: a minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning and who occasionally blunders into spectacular failures.
 
This book full of short conversation pieces is a collection that plays to the author’s strengths. It underscores his way of finding suitably quirky subjects (the history of women’s hair-dye advertisements; the secret of Heinz’s unbeatable ketchup; even the effects of women’s changing career patterns on the number of menstrual periods they experience in their lifetimes) and using each as gateway to some larger meaning. It illustrates how often he sets up one premise (i.e. that crime profiling helps track down serial killers) only to destroy it.
 
Gladwell has divided his book into three sections. The first deals with what he calls obsessives and minor geniuses; the second with flawed ways of thinking. The third focuses on how we make predictions about people: will they make a good employee, are they capable of great works of art, or are they the local serial killer?
 

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Brings together, for the first time, the best of Gladwell's writing from The New Yorker in the past decade, including: the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill; the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz; spotlighting Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen; and the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer." Gladwell also explores intelligence tests, ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias," and why it was that everyone in Silicon Valley once tripped over themselves to hire the same college graduate.

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Book description
PART ONE - Obsessives, Pioneers, and Other Varieties of Minor Genius
*The Pitchman - Ron Popeil and the conquest of the American kitchen. (Oct 30, 2000)
*The Ketchup Conundrum - Mustard now comes in dozens of different varieties. Why has ketchup stayed the same? (Sept 6, 2004)
*Blowing Up - How Nassim Taleb turned the inevitability of disaster into an investment strategy. (Apr 22, 2002)

*True Colors - Hair dye and the hidden history of postwar America. (Mar 22, 1999)
*John Rock's Error - What the inventor of the birth control pill didn't know about women's health. (Mar 13, 2000)
*What the Dog Saw - Cesar Millan and the movements of mastery. (May 22, 2006)

PART TWO - Theories, Predictions, and Diagnoses
*Open Secrets - Enron, intelligence and the perils of too much information. (Jan 8, 2007)
*Million Dollar Murray - Why problems like homelessness may be easier to solve than to manage. (Feb 13, 2006)
*The Picture Problem - Mammography, air power, and the limits of looking. (Dec 13, 2004)
*Something Borrowed - Should a charge of plagiarism ruin your life? (Nov 22, 2004)
*Connecting the Dots - The paradoxes of intelligence reform. (Mar 10, 2003)
*The Art of Failure - Why some people choke and others panic. (August 21, 2000)
*Blowup - Who can be blamed for a disaster like the Challenger explosion? No one, and we'd better get used to it. (Jan 22, 1996)

PART THREE - Personality, Character, and Intelligence
*Most Likely to Succeed - How do we hire when we can't tell who's right for the job. (Dec 15, 2008)
*Dangerous Minds - Criminal profiling made easy. (Nov 12, 2007)
*The Talent Myth - Are smart people over-rated? (Jul 22, 2002)
*Late Bloomers - Why do we equate genius with precocity? (Oct 20, 2008)
*The New Boy Network - What do job interviews really tell us? (May 29, 2000)
*Troublemakers - What pit bulls can teach us about crime. (Feb 6, 2006)
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Hachette Book Group

3 editions of this book were published by Hachette Book Group.

Editions: 0316075841, 0316078573, 1600249159

Penguin Australia

An edition of this book was published by Penguin Australia.

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