7 Best Malcolm Gladwell Books

Malcolm Gladwell is best known for his best-selling books, which deal with the social sciences. He has written five bestsellers: Blink (2005), The Tipping Point (2000), Outliers (2008) and What the Dog Saw (2009). His work has been translated into more than 30 languages.

In an industry where bestsellers are published one day and obsolete the next, few authors have stood the test of time like Malcolm Gladwell. His most popular books continue to rank among bestsellers even a decade after they were first released.

The best 7 Malcolm Gladwell books:

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005) is Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling exploration into the way we think without thinking. In this book, he demonstrates that sometimes it can be best to not consider all angles and simply go with your gut instinct. 

He shares examples from real life such as Paul Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps general who became an expert on guerrilla warfare by studying rabbits, and how extroverts tend to do better than introverts at Match Games.

The main takeaway from Blink is what Malcolm Gladwell calls “thinking without thinking,” which involves considering only the essential data in a decision-making process and coming up with a quick albeit temporary answer in order to move forward quickly in a time-sensitive situation. In the business world, this is best used when a company needs to make a snap decision based on limited information.

In our personal lives, it is best used when we need to make a decision quickly and on the fly.

In this best-ranked book, Gladwell delves into why some people are successful and how a person’s upbringing can contribute to their success. 

Malcolm Gladwell has written many nonfiction books, but he is best known for his book “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference”. The point that the author is illustrating in this work is that social epidemics can be predicted and prevented. 

He uses many compelling examples to describe how people’s behavior can change drastically as the result of something very small. The thesis of the book is that these little changes could determine whether or not society will tip and move towards either success or failure.

One of the examples that Gladwell uses to explain this idea is the cause of crime in New York City. He describes how crime has historically been on a downward slope in New York City. This was because law enforcement officials started implementing better strategies for fighting criminals. However, when these tactics became used too much or too often, it backfired and the crime rate began to skyrocket. This means that it is possible for a downward-trending social epidemic, such as crime rates in New York City, to rapidly change from success into a failure just because people were too aggressive with fighting criminals.

This book was extremely interesting to read because it explained how very small things can change social epidemics in drastic ways. I think that some of the examples can be linked back to business or even my own life experiences. 

In this book, Malcolm Gladwell outlines the patterns of success and failure in today’s society. He claims that being an outlier or a maverick is what sets people apart from their peers. In the world of mass-produced textbooks and cookie-cutter services, these qualities are at a premium. The reason for this is that companies rely on capturing large quantities of customers to offset costs while delivering products of lower quality.

However, if you visit your local mom-and-pop business, there may be a team that works closely together resulting in higher sales per worker while still reaching profitability – because they take time to understand each customer’s needs before fulfilling their wants. 

This has been my own experience with several business dealings: A personal trainer that I hired for specific tasks (so we only met every 2-3 months), a printer that I used for one-off projects (and we’d meet up every couple of months), and a web-developer guy who I would pay hourly. 

All three of them had a great rapport with me as their customer and as such, they were willing to go the extra mile for me which kept my business afloat during times when I was not able to work due to health reasons. But why do some small businesses succeed where large ones fail? Gladwell claims that it all boils down to “the three rules of work”.

1. People with a certain kind of mind don’t do well at standardized jobs, but they dominate at finding solutions to unique problems.
2. The relationship between success and IQ works only up to a point, but the relationship between success and personality is linear – the more successful people tend to possess certain unalterable personality characteristics.
3. The best way to predict how someone will perform in a job is to look at how they performed in past jobs, except that you have to consider the relevance of each previous job to the one he or she is applying for.

In his New York Times bestselling debut, Malcolm Gladwell takes readers on a fascinating journey through the hidden world of dog training. With humor and deep insight into the ways that humans and dogs communicate, he presents a sometimes startling look at man’s best friend. “What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures (2009)” tells the story of dog training from an interesting new angle: what a dog would tell us if only we could understand it.

This book will be perfect for anyone who wants to know more about how culture shapes our lives because it discusses topics like advertising campaigns, religion, and even terrorism.

This book is very good because it presents concepts in an interesting way and it helps you understand how things around us influence our behavior.

The author talks about many concepts that are relevant to psychology, like the exposure effect or the self-fulfilling prophecy.

There are some parts of this book that are extremely interesting, for example the chapter about the Stanford Prison Experiment where you will learn how a role can change your behavior.

Gladwell reveals the important, often counterintuitive lessons in what seem like simple stories. If you want to look at common things differently, this is the right book for you! The articles are all well-written and easy to read. Everyone can relate to his personal anecdotes, which makes them even more effective.

If you have read “The Tipping Point” or “Blink”, definitely pick up this book! It’s worth the money, and it will only take a few hours to read. If you haven’t, why not start with this one? You won’t regret it!

“David and Goliath” is a book written by Malcolm Gladwell. The book talks about the unlikely victories of individuals who are considered underdogs, misfits, or have disabilities. The book was published in November 2013 by Back Bay Books. It received positive reviews from “USA Today” and “The New York Times Book Review”.

The book is broken into three parts. The first part focuses on the first battle that took place between David and Goliath that happened 3000 years ago, where David used his slingshot to kill Goliath because he had reached the pinnacle of success in the battle against other giants. 

The second part focuses on other battles where an underdog has defeated a giant, including how David defeated Goliath using his slingshot and how a young Indian chess master was able to defeat the Russian champion in spite of his disability. 

The third part discusses another battle where the opposite happened, where the underdog lost because they underestimated their opponent instead of taking him seriously, especially when who they thought was an underdog was actually more powerful than they were portrayed to be.

6. Talking to Strangers

In the book, Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell challenges readers to rethink their preconceptions about strangers and explore how we might be able to learn more from them.

Gladwell argues that we can often know more about a person than we think we do. He does this by telling stories of people he has encountered throughout his life and then describing what they did or said that led him to form an opinion on them. The author also offers insights into how our understanding of strangers – and the world around us – can change when taken out of context.

7. The Bomber Mafia

The Bomber Mafia is the latest work by Malcolm Gladwell, author of such bestsellers as “What the Dog Saw” and “Blink.” In this book, Gladwell demonstrates how a small group of citizens led by Guy Gibson tricked Hitler into believing that London was being bombed on multiple occasions when in reality they were just practicing for the real thing.

The book deals with a little-known incident in World War II, when a small group of citizens, led by Gibson, tricked the Nazis into thinking that London was being bombed every night. In reality, this was just a clever ruse to prepare for D-Day.

More About Malcolm Gladwell

He is a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. His writing style is characterized by an accessible tone that belies its academic subject matter. It can be read by both specialists in the field and general readers interested in social science topics without prior knowledge of their discipline. Gladwell’s articles are often about things that happen “in the blink of an eye” or have other “tipping point” qualities – the best-known example of this is his theory on the “three rules for making a splash in social media” in “The Tipping Point.”

In the world of nonfiction bestsellers, where Oprah picks a best-seller and you sell millions of copies overnight, Malcolm Gladwell is a best-selling literary phenomenon. His five most popular books rank among the best selling for all the time they have been on bestseller lists.

Final Thoughts

Malcolm Gladwell is an English-Canadian journalist, author and speaker. He has written five bestseller books in the past decade. His most recent book was “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and The Art of Battling Giants” that came out in 2013. It focuses on how people can use their disadvantages to overcome obstacles or achieve success in life through unconventional means – like when David used his sling to defeat Goliath in battle. Whether you’re looking for inspiration from a talented writer with years of experience or want to learn more about neuroscience sales tips so your business can prosper online, Malcolm Gladwell’s well-written books are worth checking out!

Do you like Malcolm Gladwell’s books? Why or why not?

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