David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

David and Goliath is not Gladwell’s best work. This comes from someone who has enjoyed his other books even though they can be a tad simplistic at times.

Let me start at the beginning, like Gladwell did—with the legend of David and Goliath who were pitted against each other in one-on-one combat. To onlookers, it appeared like David, the young shepherd boy was at a great disadvantage facing the gigantic Goliath, dressed in full armour, carrying a javelin and a sword. Yet, David defeated his opponent using a mere slingshot and a few stones.

That sets up the basic premise of Gladwell’s book—that advantages and disadvantages are not always what the world tells us they are. What seems like a weakness can sometimes become a superpower while a universally-acknowledged strength can lead to shocking defeats.

Malcolm Gladwell makes the point that rigid and limited definitions of positives and negatives result in the misreading of many a situation or conflict. He serves up the example of T E Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, who led the Arab revolt against the Turkish Army occupying Arabia toward the end of World War I.

The Turks had a formidable modern army with more than enough weapons and resources. Lawrence, by contrast, commanded an unruly band of Bedouin fighters, which even his supporters—the British—called “an untrained rabble”. In an underdog legend for the ages, Lawrence and his band of soldiers prevailed over the mighty Turks.

Each chapter tells the story of a different person—famous or unknown, ordinary or brilliant—detailing how they dealt with their situation. Gladwell uses anecdotes about ordinary people forced to respond to enormous challenges to drive home his idea.

There are chapters about students who loved science but gave up on it after getting through their preferred universities (an advantage that turned out to be disadvantageous), dyslexic investment bankers, unempathetic doctors and basketball teams so bad that they had no choice but to break some unspoken rules. In the basketball chapter, Gladwell writes that sometimes being awful at a sport allows you to do what others would baulk at because it seems impossible.

“To play by David’s rules you have to be desperate. You have to be so bad that you have no choice. Their teams are just good enough that they know it could never work. Their players could never be convinced to play that hard… You would think, looking at his girls, that their complete inability to pass and dribble and shoot was their greatest disadvantage. But it wasn’t, was it? It was what made their winning strategy possible.”

These are some of the effective chapters in David and Goliath.

There are other chapters however, which, in my opinion, didn’t quite hit the target. They too are stories about people dealing with challenging or difficult situations. Take for instance, the story of Wilma Derksen. Her thirteen-year-old daughter was murdered but she chose to forgive the man who committed the crime in order to spare her family the emotional, financial and mental strain of a fight for justice. Doesn’t sound much like the proverbial David, does it?

Another chapter that felt like it was being forced to fit a box it wasn’t meant for, is about the French village of Le Chambon, which stood up to the Nazis during the German occupation. It’s a great story but even Gladwell isn’t pretending like the people of Le Chambon outsmarted or outfought the Nazis. So, do they qualify to be David? I think not.

Herein lies the weakness of David and Goliath—one that it is unable to overcome. Sadly, the book is a bit light on supporting research and tries to make up for it with stories, many of which sparkle but don’t necessarily illuminate.

Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath left me thinking fondly of his other books like Outliers and The Tipping Point.