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

Short Answer Questions

1. Where was Ranadivé’s team based?

2. How many new teachers does Gladwell say American schools hired between 1996 and 2004?

3. What danger does Gladwell say T. E. Lawrence’s men encountered along the way to Aqaba?

4. Where does Gladwell say dyslexics’ neurons get “lost along the way” (99)?

5. In the English expression Gladwell quotes, how many generations does it take for families who get rich to be poor again?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the chart Gladwell uses, to describe the phenomenon of “diminishing marginal returns” (49)?

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

3. What were the advantages Lawrence of Arabia’s force had, compared to the Turks?

4. What does Gladwell say is Gary Cohn’s emotional relationship with the daring leaps he took, to get himself into trading, from selling aluminum siding?

5. What is the lesson Gladwell wants us to take from his parable of David and Goliath?

6. What are the challenges Gladwell’s powerful Hollywood friend experienced, in raising his children?

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

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

9. What did Ranadivé find was the disadvantage of his success with his coaching style?

10. What does Gladwell say caused the changing demographics of Shepaug Valley Middle School in Connecticut?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Gladwell frequently juxtaposes what his subjects do with what “the rest of us” do or think (273). Who are the “we” in Gladwell’s views, and what do “we” typically think? Does Gladwell define this common knowledge, or just use “us” as a straw man for his arguments? What is the real difference between “us” and his subjects?

Essay Topic 2

Compare and contrast Gladwell’s work with other public intellectuals like Christopher Hitchens or Chris Hedges. How are they similar, how are they different? What are the unique features of Gladwell’s book, compared to the others? What kind of public intellectual is Gladwell?

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,132 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample