Second Article

Just finished another article, Examined Life, which is about the S.A.T.s and how effective they are. Apparently hard work and determination means nothing to the people who made the S.A.T., which is silly.

Gladwell gives a lot of information in the article as well as establishes his point. I knew nothing about the S.A.T. and now I know enough to have an opinion about the test.

It's interesting too, he gives examples of actual problems on the test and how it can be answered without actually reading any passages or (for math) solving any problems.

Like the last article, he frames and bases this article on a person, Stanley H. Kaplan, and uses plenty of examples and evidence.

First Article

Just finished the first article from Gladwell, Baby Steps. It was an article from 2000 because I was curious as to how he wrote then. I noticed less humor, although he did have some clever phrases. What he did then that he still does now is give plenty of evidence from other people. In the spaghetti video below he based his whole presentation on Howard Moskowitz, while in the Baby Steps article, he bases it on many people like Hillary Clinton and John Bruer just to name a couple.

For the next articles I'll be looking for the similar things;how he builds his authority and the kind of evidence he decides to use. I'll probably read a few more articles before starting one of his books.

First off I wanted to post this video of Gladwell, he's an interesting speaker. He's funny and has a crazy hairdo and talks about diversity using an example of a man (Howard Moskowitz) who created all the many different kinds of Prego spaghetti sauce, extra chunky made 600 million dollars in its first 10 years.

Malcolm Gladwell's website has information about his books, blogs, and New Yorker articles he wrote since 1996. Lots to read here.

First Post

To be honest, Malcolm Gladwell was the only author I looked at, since I thought I was sure I'd like him.

His first book, the Tipping Point, is about change. He says something about thinking of life as an epidemic because of how epidemics start quickly and then die down just as fast.

He was a scientific writer and has been writing for the New Yorker since about the mid 1990's. He addresses some topics about IQ and has a blog on his website.