IRB #3 Intro: David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

For my third IRB of the school year, I have chosen to read David and Goliath, by Malcolm Gladwell. This book comes highly recommended from my father, and APELC seems like the perfect environment through which to understand the book at it's deepest levels. David and Goliath is a series of essays, ranging from such diverse topics as the impact of population decline on public views concerning elementary class size to early leukemia treatments in Chicago hospitals. Each essay is tied together by a progressive analysis of how the main character or characters in each essay overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to achieve their ends. What is unique about this book, and about Gladwell, is his ability to extract a network of meaning and symbolism from seemingly disjointed events across time and space. This can be seen in the title text, which bills itself first as an examination and critique of how it was that, in the famous biblical epoch, David managed to defeat Goliath, and is expanded upon in each progressive text, until a complete picture of how the David's of the world beat the Goliath's of the world is achieved. I look forward to reading David and Goliath, and hopefully gaining more knowledge about the world as Gladwell observes it.