Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell
Occupation	Non-fiction writer, journalist
Nationality	Canadian
Period	1987–present
Notable works	The Tipping Point (2000) Blink (2005) Outliers (2008)

Malcolm Gladwell (born September 3, 1963) is a British-born Canadian journalist, author, and pop sociologist, based in New York City. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He is best known as the author of the books, The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005), and Outliers (2008).

Early life

Gladwell's English father, Graham, is a civil engineering professor at the University of Waterloo; his mother, Joyce, is a Jamaican-born psychotherapist. Gladwell has said that his mother, who published a book titled Brown Face, Big Master in 1969, is his role model as a writer. Though born in the United Kingdom, Gladwell was raised in Elmira, Ontario, Canada and graduated with a degree in history from the University of Toronto's Trinity College in 1984. During his high school years, Gladwell was an outstanding middle distance runner and won the 1500m Midget Boys title at the 1978 Ontario High School championships in Kingston, Ontario, in a duel with eventual Canadian Open record holder David Reid.

Career

Gladwell began his career at The American Spectator, a conservative monthly. From 1987 to 1996, he was a science writer—and later the New York bureau chief—for The Washington Post. He is currently a staff writer for The New Yorker. His books—The Tipping Point (2000) and Blink (2005)—were international bestsellers. Both works were substantially serialized in The New Yorker. Gladwell received a one million dollar advance for The Tipping Point, which went on to sell over two million copies in the United States. Blink sold equally well. The sales of the books made Gladwell a successful public speaker, commanding about US$40,000 an appearance. His latest book, Outliers: The Story of Success, was released on November 18, 2008.

Works

Gladwell's books and articles often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences and make frequent and extended use of academic work, particularly in the areas of sociology, psychology, and social psychology. Gladwell's first work, The Tipping Point, discusses the potentially massive implications of small-scale social events, while his second book, Blink, explains how the human subconscious interprets events or cues and how past experiences allow people to make informed decisions very rapidly. His latest work, Outliers, examines how a person's environment affects his or her possibility and opportunity for success. Gladwell has stated, "The hope with Tipping Point was it would help the reader understand that real change was possible. With Blink, I wanted to get people to take the enormous power of their intuition seriously. My wish with Outliers is that it makes us understand how much of a group project success is. When outliers become outliers it is not just because of their own efforts. It's because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances".

Honors

In 2005, Time named Malcolm Gladwell one of its 100 most influential people. He is the author of three books, each of which reached number one on the New York Times Best Seller list. In 2007, he received the American Sociological Association's first Award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues. Also in 2007, Gladwell received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Waterloo.

Bibliography

• The Tipping Point (2000)
• Blink (2005)
• Outliers (2008)

External links

• Personal website
• TED Talks: Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce at TED in 2004
• Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker bio