Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


I’m a meek rider on a distracted elephant

Switch by Dan Heath, Chip Heath

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Full disclosure, I’m predisposed to love this kind of book.  Malcolm Gladwell’s rise to popularity was a boon to me as I love research into what makes people behave as they do, en masse and as individuals.  Behavioral economics is my jam. I wasn’t as thrilled by the last Heath brothers book I read, The Power of Moments, as it didn’t feel as substantive as Built to Stick, their expansion on Gladwell’s “stickiness” requirement for ideas to “tip” in The Tipping Point. This is something […]

There’s no need to fear! Underdog is here!

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This was my second foray into the world of Malcolm Gladwell during the Cannonball and it’s not the last. I really enjoy his books and the way he reads them. Gladwell performs his own narration which I believe improves the quality of an audio book. Gladwell is a smooth, easy reader with an inviting tone. David and Goliath discusses how there may be inherent advantages in perceived disadvantages. Right away, the conclusions are loose and not definitive in anyway but I do not think hat […]

Wanted: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen

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Malcolm Gladwell is a storyteller. What I find particularly admirable about his work is that he is able to convey what has been traditionally a spoken language skill into a written one–while reducing seemingly complex ideas into digestible bite-size chunks. It is not surprising, then, that The Tipping Point (2000) was a best seller and achieved “one of the best books of the decade” status on many lists. Pulling from a broad set of examples from different aspects of life and history, such as from Paul Revere’s […]

David, the cheater, and Goliath, the large, disabled man

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At this point, I’ve read most of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, and I’ve always enjoyed reading them. So when I saw that his new one: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (2013), I got on the wait list–almost–immediately. Gladwell has a style of looking at and analyzing the world around him in a unique way, and then distilling that information for his readers. I still like his explanation of why most of Canada’s best hockey players were born in December. Unfortunately, […]



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