Malcolm Gladwell on U.K. Tour

Best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell kicked off his U.K. tour last night in Glasgow at the King's Theatre. The reason for his tour is the release of the paperback version of Outliers: The Story of Success, the best-selling pop sociology book with entertaining stories of how people become wildly accomplished. As Gladwell joked in his performance, the purpose of his tour was to convince the audience to buy his book "in triplicate." Gladwell chose to make the current global financial crisis the focus of his one-hour talk.

And to explain the phenomenon and not bore his listeners with discussion of head-spinning derivatives, he chose to use an example of the American Civil War, a topic he joked his Scottish audience wouldn't challenge him on. What Gladwell basically says is that "miscalibration" - the overconfidence of experts - helped spiral the world's economy out of control. Those who were armed with information, expertise, and most of all, power, didn't react fast enough with urgency and solutions to handle the crisis looming in the horizon.

Perhaps it's an oversimplified explanation given in hindsight of the recession we're living in now, but I'm looking forward to his next article or book that'll elucidate more on his theories. Gladwell is an important thinker in the modern world, and not to be missed if you get the chance to see him live.

-Helen I. Hwang

For more tour dates, go to www.malcolmgladwell-live.com. For more information on Malcolm Gladwell, go to www.gladwell.com.