Malcolm Gladwell and Nate Silver Try to Explain the World — Again
On the Edge and Revenge of the Tipping Point both aim to inspire their readers.
Illustration: Melek Zertal for Bloomberg
Walk into the office of a college endowment or of any professional who regularly attends well-funded annual meetings and conferences, and you will see the same books, objects meant as much as souvenirs as things to be read. There are books by leaders (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Tony Blair) and winners (Nick Saban, Mike Krzyzewski); books by insiders in Washington (every single soul on CNN, Fox and MSNBC) and insiders of the human mind (all the heirs of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky). There are books by adventurers, by profilers of genius, by profilers of rebels, by profilers of adventurer-genius-rebels, and occasionally books by writers famous for what they write about.
This last category is usually books by explainers — writers telling us how to see a complicated world.