David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, Malcolm Gladwell, 2013

Rating: 4/5

One way to approach David and Goliath is to treat it as a collection of essays or interesting stories rather than as a book - a reader could pick up any one of the nine chapters of the book (divided equally into three sections) or even the introduction and read it on a standalone basis. It did not work as a single cohesive book for me, however.

It starts with an interesting take on the story of David and Goliath, set  over three thousand years ago in the Valley of Elah in modern-day Israel. Unlike the traditional interpretation of the underdog beating the giant in that famous battle, Gladwell argues that David's success was due to the strategy that he adopted - he was a projectile warrior pitted against infantryman Goliath and in most such battles, the former would usually prevail. And that interesting version of the tale sets the tone for the book!

The book is packaged into three sections - the first two discuss how disadvantages can be advantages and vice versa, and how some difficulties can actually be desirable. Each anecdote has a "David" of sorts. And they usually succeed because they change the rules of the game and adopt atypical tactics or they are forced to do so due to some inherent challenges that they have. Apparently, underdog strategies increases the possibility of the weaker side winning from 29% to 64%! But underdog strategies are hard to adopt. The third section is about the limits of using power and I'm still not clear how that fit into the overall theme.

Some of the anecdotes are extremely interesting and cover a range of topics such as a junior school basketball team, the choice of colleges, the London bombings during World War II and even Ikea. Others are less fascinating though or seem out of context. Like some of his other books, Gladwell does not really have much substance on the topic of his book itself and he ends up force-fitting examples to justify the title. But I found many of the stories interesting and informative. Like I said at the beginning, I approached this as a collection of essays and that merited a 4/5 rating for this book.

Pros: Interesting anecdotes, diverse topics

Cons: Parts forcibly fitted into a whole