“David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants” by Malcolm Gladwell

I’ve read parts of several Gladwell books. He has brilliant, creative ideas about how things work and gives detailed examples from history and science to support them. I’m usually very engaged at the beginning, then bog down with too many lengthy examples illustrating the premise, and I often don’t finish. But, these days, I’m battling political, corporate, power-hungry giants myself, and I gravitate towards reading that comforts and gives me hope. When I saw DAVID AND GOLIATH on the congregational sharing shelf of our church library, I grabbed it.

I love Gladwell’s interpretation of the biblical account of David and Goliath, especially since I’d just read Rob Bell’s phenomenal WHAT IS THE BIBLE?, which gives much the same account. DAVID AND GOLIATH was worth reading for just this piece.

As with Gladwell’s other books, I did tire a bit from overload but stayed fascinated by his premises. He explains how and why the size of the classes in schools affects learning and dispels the idea that smaller is always better. He tells us why attending an elite college doesn’t always lead to success. He uses incidents from Lawrence of Arabia and Martin Luther King, Jr., to show how their “underdog” status served them well. He does a great job of describing Emil Freireich’s unrelenting fight against the giant of cancer.

I particularly liked the account of how Londoners’ dealt with the German bombing offensive (The Blitz) during WWII. We complicated humans are “afraid of being afraid”, Gladwell says, and then, when we face that fear and find out we can handle the unthinkable, we gain courage. That’s been my experience, and Gladwell expresses it well.

This Gladwell book I finished. And I came away from it, as I’d hoped, with a bit more belief in the power of the underdog and of innovative strategies and of my own ability to fight back and to win. You never know, DAVID AND GOLIATH keeps showing us. Upsets and reversals and amazing things can happen when we battle giants. You just never know.

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