Tag: Malcolm Gladwell

The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell (Non fiction)

Gladwell’s latest tackles the highly emotional topic of Violence in America — and he tackles it with a shocking amount of anger and aggression aimed at Americans — all 350 million of us. Gladwell’s general approach to his subjects is to (in his words) find interesting anecdotes and interesting research and pair them up. The set of vignettes in this collection do this but in a hostile and often misleading way. Hostile in that he’s clearly angry at Americans (again — all of us) literally and repeatedly calling us stupid, dishonest, “morally reckless,” and pedantic at various points in the narratives. Misleading in that none of his “stories” are comprehensive — some offer partial (but never tested at scale) solutions, many describe efforts and explain why they are a waste of time, a few contradict each other, and several leave out critical aspects of the data that could change the conclusions. I am glad I read this book and I did learn some new and relevant information, but I strongly recommend reading the book critically and doing your own supplemental research to get a fuller picture.

The bits I found interesting: Americans (according to Gladwell) think they are over policed, but in fact we are largely under-policed. A comparison of police forces in L.A. and Berlin (equal populations with L.A. a larger physical area) surprised me. 8,500 police in L.A. vs 18,000 in Berlin. This section included a good description of how a larger police force could prevent more crime and improve community engagement based on interviews with those who had run large police forces (e.g. Boston, L.A.). A dive into a program to teach young men (the victims and perpetrators of the largest segment of gun violence) how to maintain emotional control based on the “realization” that much of gun violence was based on “an exaggerated sense of moral injury leading them to take the law into their on hands.” A few dips into how gun fatality statistics are influenced on the one hand by the amazing abilities of surgeons to save victims who would have died in the past, and on the other hand by the location of trauma centers which are often not close enough to the areas that need them the most. While not productive in any sense, I did learn something from the details of the assault weapons ban — pages and pages of specific weapons banned, an even longer list of those not banned, followed by his point that most homicides were committed with handguns anyway.

The pointless or frustrating bits: Long diatribes about our “absurd” focus on the second amendment and the pedantic nature of the Supreme Court, betraying incomprehension for what the Constitution is and how the Supreme Court is supposed to make decisions (Gladwell is a British-Canadian who has lived in the U.S. since the mid eighties without applying for citizenship so maybe he missed the memo?). Conflating homicides and suicides into single gun violence statistics which give misleading ideas about where the biggest problems are. Some sideways mentions of racism without any cohesive theme — almost as though just throwing it in there.

I’ve read most, if not all, of Gladwell’s books and have enjoyed them. They are called “pop sociology” and I enjoy the surprising tidbits. However, with such a critical topic under discussion, the light-weight nature of the anecdotes coupled with the needlessly hostile tone really didn’t work for me. Read it — but spend some time thinking about what you read and maybe do a little extra research before drawing any conclusions.

There are so many good sources of relevant information out there. Here are a few statistics that I found (and found easily): There is an oft referenced meme on gun friendly states having the highest amount of gun deaths. Using the CDC data at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/state-stats/deaths/homicide.html, what I found is that by removing the suicides and only looking at homicides, many of the “red” states known to be very gun friendly (Montana, Wyoming, Alaska) jumped down to the middle of the list because almost all (80-90%) of their gun deaths were suicides. In fact, California (very blue!) and Montana (pretty red!) have the exact same number of homicide gun deaths per capita. I also looked up what percentage of firearms in the U.S. were used to cause injury or fatality — according to https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions/data/annual-gun-violence-data, this is 0.003% of all firearms. Lastly, I asked one of the AI engines to give me information on guns used in self-defense and it gave me pointers to several different surveys run by a variety of organizations resulting in a large range (70,000 – 2,500,000) of reported self-defense events, mostly guns used as a deterrant, i.e. without firing a shot. For me this helps to frame why so many people want guns and how few (and concentrated) the use of guns for violence is.

I should mention that I am by no means a “gun nut,” and I’m extremely worried about the level of overall violence in our country — not just inner city gun homicides, but the tendency towards violence with any kind of weapon, the acceptance of politically motivated violence, the excusing of violence committed by the mentally ill, and the violence committed by people who just seem to enjoy it. Some level of gun control is of course required, but it is in no way sufficient. We have a big problem with people and culture — some of Gladwell’s stories point in the right direction, but not nearly enough.

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on September 29th, 2027.

Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (Non-fiction)

Always an engaging storyteller, Gladwell expands on the Tipping Point theme with an array of anecdotes, research, and social trends to show the impact of tipping points in many important constituents of our society. Ranging from localized bank robbery surges to medical mysteries to social epidemics to group proportions to — my favorite — why Harvard cares so much about arcane sports teams (like girl’s rugby), Gladwell works to understand the evolution of social problems and various bits of social engineering that have or could be applied to nudge things in the right direction. He includes several thought provoking ethical questions regarding these issues — no answers, but I always appreciate the ethical angle.

Some of the book sections that I particularly enjoyed: superspreaders — people who spread germs, pollution, bad behavior — spread orders of magnitude more than “regular” people. Group proportions — the “magic” 1/3 which is the fraction of a group that converts token outsiders into fully fledged members, with both good and bad consequences (think white flight and a truly shocking — to me — story of how Harvard developed its complex admissions process). Small area variation — how monocultures in small areas can lead to radically different behavior when compared to neighbor communities. Think vaccination rates, tonsillectomies, or suicide. The Overstory — how a story can get embedded into a culture without anyone being aware of the shifts. My favorite story here — a connection between the legalization of gay marriage and a long running sitcom starring an openly gay man.

In the last chapter — Conclusion — Gladwell applies the tipping point components developed in the book to the opioid crisis — quoting frequently from the Purdue Pharma (makers of Oxycontin) / Sackler family trial. I don’t completely agree with his conclusions, but was pretty shocked by some of the marketing and sales practices the pharmaceutical company used and how beyond effective (in terms of profit) they were.

Overall this was a thought provoking book, and I enjoyed reading it — with the exception of the first chapter about the LA bank robbery surge which for some reason both bored and upset me. If you feel yourself losing interest as well — just skip the first chapter! I quite enjoyed everything after.

Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

I always love Gladwell’s books. This one is about the (sometimes very serious) mistakes we make when communicating with strangers. In typical Gladwell style the book blends research with anecdote with analysis of relevant high profile cases — Ana Montes, Bernie Madoff, Jerry Sandusky, Brock Turner, Amanda Knox, and some police departments. Even if you don’t recognize all of the names, you will recognize the cases.

There are three basic components to the problem. Humans are programmed to “default to the truth.” We like to believe people are telling the truth and unless the doubt becomes insurmountable, we have a tendency to rationalize away any misgivings or even the suspicions of others. Ana Montes and Bernie Madoff fall into this category. Transparency is next problem — we expect people’s internal feelings and thoughts to be reflected transparently on their faces … in the way we expect. We have been trained to expect a certain set of behaviors and expressions in someone who is sad, for example. When someone we don’t know behaves according to our expectations, we are confident we understand their inner state; when they don’t, we can easily misinterpret their behavior. Jerry Sandusky and Amanda Knox are cases that illustrate this phenomenon. Lastly, there is the concept of coupling to context. We don’t (can’t) understand the influence of context in which a stranger’s behavior is taking place. Sylvia Plath and Brock Turner (and alcohol) illustrate this point.

What to me is the most important part of the book, however, is that Gladwell points out that if we optimize for suspicion so that people like Ana Montes and Bernie Madoff don’t get away with their crimes for so long, we can tear the fabric of society apart. Most people don’t lie, commit crimes, or run around with malevolent intent, but if we treat everyone as suspicious — particularly those in a specific neighborhood, or with foreign license plates, or with a different colored skin — we run some terrible risks (which he illustrates in some very compelling ways). Now with Covid, it feels like we are viewing every other human being with suspicion.

As with all of Gladwell’s books — full of insight, completely accessible and utterly fascinating.