Malcolm Gladwell visited the U Tuesday to speak about his most recent book, “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants,” which was published Oct. 1.
Gladwell came as the guest of the Hinckley Institute of Politics, which brought him to Utah as the inaugural speaker for the Sam Rich Speaking Series at Abravanel Hall Tuesday evening.
Tickets for the event sold out a week and a half in advance, and students lined up an hour before the forum to witness the interview in person.
Gladwell said his goal in writing the book was to change the way people see advantages and underdogs.
“We have a weird set of intuitive biases about advantages,” he said. “We can’t get it out of our heads that the guy that’s really really strong and big has to be called the favorite and that the kid that has out-thought him and happens to be really nimble … has to be in second place … we jump to conclusions about what the advantageous situation is.”
He argues this in his book, which analyzes the stories of many kinds of underdogs. On closer inspection, it turns out that there is a lot more to successful underdogs than they get credit for. Among other things, they are gutsy, creative, faithful and have a complete disregard for rules and regulations. Gladwell argues that David fit all of those criteria, and he had something Goliath did not: dangerous technology.
“David’s weapon — the sling — is not a child’s toy. It’s one of the most devastating weapons of ancient times,” Gladwell said.
He added that the rock aimed right at Goliath’s forehead would have had the power of a .45 caliber hand gun.
“It’s actually one of the most fun things I did with the book, was to start reading in the scholarly literature around that story,” Gladwell said.
Though smaller than Goliath, Gladwell argues that David was not a scrawny kid without a chance of defeating a giant. Instead, he entered the valley floor to fight his foe and defend his people with technology, good aim, the power of God and the nerve to change the rules of a hand-to-hand combat, which traditionally would have been fought with swords.
There is also evidence in the Biblical account leading scholars to believe that Goliath may have been so large because of an overgrown tumor, which inhibited his sight. After this analysis, Goliath starts to look less invincible and more like a sitting duck.
“David wasn’t this outlandish upstart,” Gladwell said.
Though he presents a new reading of the Bible story, Gladwell does not discount David’s heavenly help.
“He is filled with the Spirit of the Lord,” Gladwell said.
The book took a new turn, emphasizing this part of the story, when Gladwell visited a Mennonite woman in Canada whose daughter was abducted, tortured and later found frozen to death. Despite the heartache, this mother was able to forgive the man that murdered her daughter.
“Where does she get the power to do that?” Gladwell asked. “There is no explanation for that, other than that power which is faith … If you’re going to write a book about where power comes from and where our notions about where power comes from are flawed, you have to end up with faith.”
The book starts with the story of David and Goliath and ends with “ordinary people who can do extraordinary things,” he said.
Despite the clear influence of faith in his book, Gladwell said it has been largely ignored in the first rounds of reviews from major media outlets over the past month.
“I thought I’d written a book about faith … but I think a lot of people just weren’t willing to go there,” Gladwell said. “It’s weird that the discussion of faith in that context in 2013 is considered to be so strange.”
Kirk Jowers, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics, said he enjoyed having Gladwell at the U.
“He’s as good as his books, if not better, as a human being,” Jowers said.