I’ve always had a good impression of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, but after reading David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and The Art of Battling Giants, I want to find Blink, Outliers, and all the others. They are bound to be just as insightful and transformational as this one.

Gladwell’s two-fold premise is that some perceived disadvantages are actually advantages in the right context and vice versa. He frames the book around the battle between David and Goliath. The army of Israel was terrified of the gigantic warrior Goliath, who could probably spear two men at once. Who could win a sword fight with a man like this? But David, inspired with a confidence from the Lord, changed the battle plan.

I was skeptical of this description at first, as you may be, but Gladwell backs it up beautifully. Goliath was prepared for a hand-to-hand fight. His arrogance probably kept him from considering potential threats like David’s sling, and his eye-sight may have been pretty bad due to the condition, pituitary macroadenoma, that made him a giant (height: “six cubits and a span”). One scholar suggests Goliath’s shield bearer, who stood in front of him when they first met David, was actually a guide, because the warrior’s sight was that bad.

The endnotes in this book hold many cool details like these, but the theme of the story is that Goliath’s considerable advantages on the battlefield became disadvantages with new rules of engagement. The same can be seen in many other situations:

1. Class Size: Common wisdom says small class sizes are best for learning, but many school teachers have learned that their classes can be too small. They need a critical mass of curiosity and energy to work with.
2. Top Schools: Getting into the best school you can isn’t necessarily your best choice. You actually want to pick a school in which you can excel. Being in the lower 50% of your Harvard class can kill your spirit, even if you graduate with a degree.
3. Out-gunned: Ivan Arreguin-Toft says of all the wars over the last 200 years between large countries and small countries, the large counties won only 71.5% of the time. Of the remaining third of these conflicts, the small countries won 63.6% of their conflicts when they refused to fight as expected.

Gladwell tells many fascinating stories about the advantages of difficulties and the limits of advantages. He talks about men who struggled with dyslexia and learned what they needed to become successful executives. He talks of the civil rights protests in 1963 Birmingham and the wit needed to provoke a conflict that would show outsiders the plight of Blacks living in the South. He also describes the unexpected benefits of surviving an air raid.

Before the German air raids on Great Britain, military leaders anticipated wide-spread trauma and hysteria from the survivors. They believed the Germans would kill six hundred thousand, wound over a million, and scare the hell out of everyone else. But when the air raids began with 57 consecutive nights of bombing, British military leaders discovered no panic. Forty thousand were killed and about that many were wounded throughout the campaign, but the survivors did not run screaming through the streets.

After the war was over, a psychiatrist name MacCurdy concluded that all survivors were not the same. There were those who were traumatized, but there were also many who were far from the blast or got through one unscathed that came to believe they were invincible. One diarist wrote, “Ever since we came out of the dug-out [having survived a raid] I have felt sure nothing would ever hurt us.”

So going through an air raid, even losing your house in one, can be the thing that makes you bolder than you’ve ever been. The fear of being afraid held you back before. Now you’ve been through the worst event imaginable and lived. You are unbreakable.

Gladwell shows us this principle at work during the civil rights movement in Birmingham. Pastor Fred Shuttlesworth, no doubt a courageous man going into the fight for equal rights, had his house blown up by the KKK. He survived uninjured. From the book:

A big cop was crying. “Reverend, I know these people,” he said of the bombers. “I didn’t think they would go this far. If I were you, I’d get out of town. These people are vicious.”

“Well, Officer, you’re not me,” Shuttlesworth said. “Go back and tell your Klan brothers that if the Lord saved me from this, I’m here for the duration. The fight is just beginning.”

Every chapter in this book could make a great blog discussion, so I highly recommend it. It is eye-opening. (Disclosure: I received this book for review.)