View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where does David’s stone hit Goliath?

2. Gladwell says that 77% of Americans would rather decrease class size than do what?

3. What does David do after he stuns Goliath?

4. Where does Gladwell say local slingers played a decisive role against an invading army?

5. How tall does Gladwell say the tallest man in the world was?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Gladwell say is the conventional wisdom about class size in schools?

2. How does Gladwell say dyslexia prepared Brian Grazer to be a movie producer?

3. How does Gladwell explain Ikea’s success through “disagreeableness” (118)?

4. What is Harvard’s theory of the “happy bottom quarter” (90)?

5. What does Gladwell say is the advantage David has over Goliath?

6. What is “relative deprivation” (77)?

7. What does Gladwell say about Gary Cohn’s relationship with failure?

8. What does Gladwell say leads people to adopt David’s strategies?

9. Where were the Philistines expanding into, when they encountered the armies of the Israelites?

10. Gladwell seems to want it both ways, valuing poverty and celebrating wealth. Does Gladwell acknowledge or try to resolve this contradiction?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Malcolm Gladwell uses one particular mechanism to great effect in David and Goliath: He says This phenomenon is exactly the same as That phenomenon, then pulls out the law or reason or pattern that unites them. Sometimes this is highly effective, but sometimes it creates some unusual comparisons or elisions. Where in David and Goliath is this similarity effect most illuminative, and where is it most troublesome to whatever point it is that Gladwell is trying to make at the time?

Essay Topic 2

In many of Gladwell’s stories, Gladwell attributes a person’s success to the one trait he (Gladwell) is talking about—but this approach blinds us to the thousands of other variables that affect people’s careers and decisions, which in many cases are tied to other factors like the times, or simple luck, or the privileges of class and race that kept Dr. Freireich from being jailed for DWI, for instance (137).

How are Context and Privilege eclipsed in Gladwell’s stories, how does he try to account for them, and how successful is he? Does his refusal to include compounding variables ultimately compromise his examples to two-dimensionality?

Essay Topic 3

In addition to being a writer, Gladwell is known for his podcasts. Compare and contrast Gladwell’s book with a podcast episode. How are they similar, how are they different? Is Gladwell making podcast literary, or making books more like podcasts? In which genre does Gladwell come into his own?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,105 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample