Malcolm Gladwell, the #1 bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, offers his most provocative—and dazzling—book yet. “In the vast world of nonfiction writing, Malcolm Gladwell is as close to a singular talent as exists today.” —NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
We all know that underdogs can win—that’s what the David versus Goliath legend tells us, and we’ve seen it with our own eyes. Or have we? In DAVID AND GOLIATH, Malcolm Gladwell, with his unparalleled ability to grasp connections others miss, uncovers the hidden rules that shape the balance between the weak and the mighty, the powerful and the dispossessed. Gladwell examines the battlefields of Northern Ireland and Vietnam, takes us into the minds of cancer researchers and civil rights leaders, and digs into the dynamics of successful and unsuccessful classrooms—all in an attempt to demonstrate how fundamentally we misunderstand the true meaning of advantages and disadvantages. When does a traumatic childhood work in a person's favor? When does a disability leave someone better off? Drawing upon psychology, history, science, business, and politics, DAVID AND GOLIATH is a beautifully written book about the surprising power of the underdog. Millions of readers have been waiting for the next Malcolm Gladwell book. That wait is over. • Gladwell’s previous books have sold millions of copies and been permanent fixtures on the bestseller lists since publication. • It has been almost five years since Outliers (LB, 978-0-316-01792-3, 11/08), and the arrival of DAVID AND GOLIATH will be the nonfiction publishing event of the year.
“The most original American journalist since the young Tom Wolfe…. Nobody writes the kind of stories he does, because nobody else thinks the way he does.” —BALTIMORE SUN
Excerpt from DAVID AND GOLIATH:
Malcolm Gladwell 978-0-316-20436-1
$29.00 ($32.00 in Canada) • Nonfiction •
5 3⁄8
x 8 • 304 pgs Territories: U.S., Canada, and Open Market • Audio, Book Club and Large Print rights: Little, Brown and Company; UK, Translation, First Serial and Performance rights: Janklow & Nesbit Associates • Editor: Geoff Shandler
Hachette Audio: Unabr. CD: 978-1-61113-752-1 • $40.00/$44.00 Large Print Edition: 978-0-316-23985-1 • $31.00/$34.00 Also available in downloadable audio and e-book formats
BILL WADMAN
David and Goliath
Malcolm Gladwell
has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1996. Prior to joining The New Yorker, he was a reporter at the Washington Post. Gladwell was born in England and grew up in rural Ontario. He now lives in New York.
In the center of old Saigon, just down the street from the Reunification Palace, is a well-worn European-style villa that dates from the days when Vietnam was a French colony—and Saigon was the closest thing, on that side of the world, to Paris. The address is 176 Rue Pasteur. It is a day-care center now, but for a time in the 1960s, it was home to a secret Pentagon study, and what emerged from the villa had a profound effect on the course of the war in Vietnam waged by the U.S. military. The work at 176 Pasteur also—no less importantly—started an argument. On one side of that debate was a man named Leon Goure, who for a time lived upstairs in one of the villa’s grand bedrooms and cut a wide swath through the expatriate community of Saigon. On the other side was an equally remarkable man named Konrad Kellen, who, as a point of principle, refused to set foot in the villa at all. In the fight between Goure and Kellen, Goure turned out to be wrong and Kellen turned out to be right. The tragedy of 176 Pasteur— and the puzzle that DAVID AND GOLIATH sets out to explore—is that very few people realized this, at least until it was too late.
October hardcover
MARKETING Advertising Print advertising in New York Times, USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal Online advertising on Facebook, Google, and mobile advertising Publicity Author Tour National television and radio satellite tour National media campaign including television, radio, print, and online interviews Promotion 8-copy floor display with special riser: 978-0-316-24003-1 $232.00/$256.00 Web Marketing Social networks, blogs @Gladwell “Gladwell’s unique talent as a journalist at The New Yorker is that he can look at seemingly mundane things…and find valuable lessons about what makes human beings human.” —CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Also available: What the Dog Saw 978-0-316-07620-3 $16.99/$19.99
The Tipping Point 978-0-316-34662-7 $16.99/$19.99
Outliers 978-0-316-01793-0 $16.99/$19.99
Malcolm Gladwell: Collected 978-0-316-12309-9 $80.00/$85.00
Blink 978-0-316-01066-5 $16.99/$19.99
Little, Brown and Company 25