What the Dog Saw

I got this book, What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell from Supah Mommy through one of her many many giveaways.  Honestly, I wasn't very excited about it.  Ketchup, birth control, intelligence tests, financial planning?  Eh.  That is until I read it.

This book takes the most mundane subjects and make them super duper interesting.  Did you know that the inventor of the birth control pill was a devote Christian, went to church every day and spent his life trying to convince the church that the pill was natural?  Have you ever thought about the details of plagiarism?  How much is influence and how much is plain copying?  What about music?  How come they have different varieties of mustard but never been able to improve ketchup?

This book is awesome.  Gladwell is a superb writer.  He takes seemingly different issues and finds the common thread that makes more general observations.  One chapter is about the "Picture Problem".  He discusses mammograms and military intelligence to illustrate the problem with trying to understand a situation with just a single picture.

Maybe I just have an insatiable hunger for knowledge, but every chapter made me want to devote my life to it.  One day I wanted to invest in stocks and bonds.  The next I wanted to decode military intelligence.  The next I wanted to train dogs.  I am definitely reading his other book The Tipping Point.