I’ve read a fair bit of Malcolm Gladwell and I’m having a hard time de-homogenizing “what the Dog saw” from Blink, and some of his other stuff. In general, my conclusions from this book are very similar to Blink. So let me just expound a little bit on that.
Gladwell does a superb job making dry, academic work, very readable. He weaves together interesting anecdotes and empirical evidence into a very readable piece. Unfortunately, his approach is not rigorous and his conclusions are therefore dubitable if not entirely worthless.
His ignorance is most prominent when he starts talking about the disciplines that I have studied the most (Business and Economics). A sociology professor I know thinks the same thing when he talks about sociology. I can only conclude that Gladwell is suffering from skimming the shallows without delving the depths. (“Death of expertise” and “the shallows“)
Still, there are some use cases for reading his work.
It’s a good starting point if you’re interested in the subject, just don’t let this be an ending point. It’s also a good place to get a birds-eye view of some of the most interesting academic work and some of the most prominent anomalies in literature. The material he cites has been a launching place for several of my own academic investigations.
I can’t recommend the book, there is too much ignorance and error, but it could be a worthwhile endeavor to read a chapter a night in conjunction with a real investigation, just to expand your creativity.