Malcolm Gladwell

Canadian journalist and author

• Born: September 3, 1963
• Place of Birth: England

Biography

Malcolm Gladwell was born in the market town of Fareham in southeast Hampshire, England, on September 3, 1963, to parents Graham Gladwell, a mathematician and engineering professor, and Joyce Nation, a Jamaican-born physiotherapist. His family moved from England to Canada when he was six years old, and he grew up in Elmira, Ontario.

From his early childhood, Gladwell was intrigued by the written word. Both of his parents were published authors, and he was raised in a Mennonite home without a television set. He read the Bible as a child, and at the age of sixteen he won a writing competition for his written interview with God. While still in high school, Gladwell published an article in Ad Hominem: A Journal of Slander and Critical Opinion.

Despite this early success, Gladwell never thought of journalism as a career. After he graduated with a history degree from the University of Toronto in 1984, he tried to get a job in advertising, but had little success. On a whim, he accepted a job at a conservative magazine, the American Spectator, but he was eventually fired because he overslept. In 1987, he joined the staff of the Washington Post, where he was a science writer and later the New York bureau chief. In 1996, Gladwell became a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine.

Although Gladwell is generally considered a business writer, particularly after the publication of his first book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000), he preferred to think of himself as someone who observes the things that most people take for granted. The Tipping Point spent twenty-eight weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list and more than two years on BusinessWeek's bestseller list.

In The Tipping Point, Gladwell provides a map to describe how ideas travel through word-of-mouth and connections, which he dubs "connectors, mavens, and salesmen." The book combines his obsession with the mundane, such as subway graffiti, television programming, and the indicators of a successful marriage, with his ability to turn such subjects into fascinating stories. Gladwell's second book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), examines how people process the information they receive through first impressions and how these impressions, which Gladwell calls "rapid cognition," can be channeled into productive thinking.

In 2008, Gladwell published Outliers: The Story of Success, which explores why certain people reach much higher levels of success than the rest of humanity. Success stories examined include professional hockey players, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and English pop-rock superstars the Beatles. The work proved extremely popular, helping to elevate Gladwell to something close to a household name. However, it also drew much criticism, particularly from intellectuals who charged Gladwell with valuing anecdotal evidence over experimental and statistical research and writing in a patronizingly simplistic style.

Gladwell's next book was What the Dog Saw (2009), a selection of his New Yorker articles. He followed this with David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (2013), in which he takes a closer look at the different factors behind unlikely successes, including how social advantages or disadvantages can play out in unexpected ways. As with his earlier works, it sold well and was praised by many for its original thinking, but was also critiqued for repackaging conventional wisdom and presenting some dubious claims.

In 2016 Gladwell launched the podcast Revisionist History, which focused on rethinking the common understanding of historical subjects. It earned positive attention and ran for multiple seasons. Gladwell built on this success by partnering with Jacob Weisberg, who had been editor-in-chief of the Slate Group, to launch a company focused on audio-based content including podcasts, audiobooks, and other formats.

Gladwell published his novel The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War in 2021. He followed that novel with Revenge of the Tipping Point, a sequel to his critically-acclaimed work The Tipping Point, in 2024.

Bibliography

Collins, Bryan. "What You Can Learn About Success from Malcolm Gladwell." Forbes, 16 Aug. 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/bryancollinseurope/2018/08/16/what-you-can-learn-about-success-from-malcolm-gladwell/#3962536534b0. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.

Fikes, Robert. "Gladwell, Malcolm (1963–)." BlackPast.org: Remembered & Reclaimed. BlackPast.org, n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.

Goldberg, Emma. "Malcom Gladwell Holds His Ideas Loosely. He Thinks You Should, Too." The New York Times, 26 Sept. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/09/26/business/malcolm-gladwell-revenge-of-the-tipping-point.html. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.

Peiser, Jaclyn. "Jacob Weisberg Leaves Slate to Join Malcolm Gladwell in Podcast Venture." The New York Times, 12 Sept. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/business/media/jacob-weisberg-slate-malcolm-gladwell.html. Accessed 1 Oct. 2024.

Poole, Steven. "The Big-Brained Salesman." New Statesman 4–10 Oct. 2013: 34–37. Print.

Tkacik, Maureen. "Gladwell for Dummies." Nation. Nation, 4 Nov. 2009. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.