My first attempt to write a book review. Date: 25-May-2014
About the author:
I have been lucky to read through his first 3 books including The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers (yet to read What The Dog Saw). My personal favourite is Outliers – where he describes (with solid real-life examples and now famous 10,000 hours concept) how success is earned with efforts and there is nothing called overnight success. How every outlier had a back story to justify their success and achievements.
About the book:
Name: David & Goliath
Pages: 305
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Price: INR 299 (Hardcover)
Available here: Flipkart, Amazon
Review:
The book is structured into 3 broad sections:
Part I: The Advantages of Disadvantages (And The Disadvantages of Advantages)
Part II: The Theory of Desirable Difficulty
Part III: The Limits of Power
In line with his style of writing, the author makes an attempt to understand why people react/act the way they do. How do people with the same background end up having totally divergent future and what goes behind the mind boggling success few people have been able to achieve in spite of their environment.
In this book, he goes a step further and questions the generally accepted meanings of being at an advantage or disadvantage. Like in one of the stories shared, the asks the reader – Being dyslexic is a big no no, the person is assumed to be an unfortunate disadvantage, right? Then how can this even be an advantage ! (ask David Boies, Brian Grazer, Ingvar Kamprad or Gary Cohn)
He uses several such examples of people, countries, cultures where what seems like a one-sided contest often turn to be otherwise with the victory of David (disadvantageous) over Goliath (seemingly at an advantage).
And why does this happen? They got nothing to lose – well that’s pretty much your answer in a gist. With their so-called disadvantages/history, society has already discounted them from the expected terms of behaviour – they don’t fit in ! now this can be both liberating and frustrating. One can either use this as a spring board to jump higher or fall through the cracks. The Davids as depicted by the author in this book, took that plunge as they had no fear of failure – they had seen worst and still survived !
Personally, I find MG books inspirational and uplifting and observe that the common thread running through his works can be described as the strong belief in the resilience and strength of human spirit.
Ashish's two cents 