What the Dog Saw (and other adventures) is the latest from Malcolm Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. The book is not one cohesive story or thesis, but rather a series of 19 Gladwell essays that were previously published in The New Yorker magazine. So if you’ve been a devout reader of The New Yorker for the past 14 years, nothing will be new to you. But knowing that no one reads the magazine, and that anything with Gladwell’s name on it will sell, it was a no-brainer to publish this book.
What the Dog Saw covers a wide variety of topics, including ketchup and mustard, women in advertising, homelessness, Enron, birth control, choking vs. panicking, and yes, even the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Millan. Each essay is written with the author’s trademark inquisitive style, which uncovers deeper layers of the subjects. I think I like Gladwell’s books because they challenge the conventional wisdom and I always learn something new.
Enron’s executives were accused of “cooking the books” and lying to employees and shareholders, but that wasn’t necessarily the case. In fact, the information investigators used to bring Enron down was publicly available. They just took a deep dive into the company’s own financial reports and SEC filings. Enron was hiding the truth in plain sight; their financials were just so incredibly complex it took some serious time and dedication to sort through them.
One of the other interesting parts was the section on homelessness. Some cities (Denver is cited as an example) have taken on a new strategy when it comes to dealing with the homeless. Because a small percentage of homeless people were costing the system a hugely disproportionate amount of money in terms of public health and policing, they found it would actually save taxpayer money to put these people up in an apartment, and provide them with dedicated job placement and substance abuse counseling. Perhaps it would cost $30,000 a year, vs. the inevitable $100,000 ER visit for the alcoholic black out who gets hit by a truck.
Of course such a plan is not without controversy. Liberals don’t like it because it’s not egalitarian; the worst offenders get the most benefit. Conservatives don’t like it because it “rewards” irresponsible behavior and does nothing to serve the sober, hard-working lower class struggling to make ends meet. It’s a policy only an economist can love.
So go check out What the Dog Saw. You’ll learn something new and gain some new perspectives an array of random subjects.
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Tags: economics
Great Book!
This was my first purchase on my Kindle :)