I just finished one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, and I wanted to get folks’ general thoughts/mini-reviews of the book as well as thoughts on the art of reading nonfiction.
Reading it, I was very entertained, and, honestly, pretty convinced of MG’s arguments. I took a look at Goodreads and there’s a fair amount of negative reviews arguing that MG oversimplifies famous scandals.
Example 1: MG makes the argument that the Penn state top brass in the Sandusky scandal (who did not raise the alarm quickly in response to suspicions about Sandusky being a pedo) deserve some mercy because it’s human to give each other the benefit of the doubt. While reading I sorta went along with this, but after reading some reviews of the book online I was reminded that the basic fact: Jerry Sandusky was showering with minors (at the very least) and his bosses knowingly did nothing about it. Hard to argue that’s not a red flag.
Example 2: MG was very light on discussion of race when analyzing the Sandra Bland incident in 2015, instead mostly explaining the situation with his ideas of how we’re bad at interacting with strangers.
Basically, MG’s vision seem woefully narrow at times and I failed to see this on my own while reading and I’m a bit disturbed about it. Hopefully I’m not inviting folks to get mired in the facts of these incidents. Mostly I’m interested in a discussion of how to stay critical while reading engrossing/compelling non-fiction, particular in regards to this book.
by panda_vigilante