Good Writing

Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. . . it succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else’s head- even if in the end you conclude that someone else’s head is not a place you’d really like to be.

– Malcolm Gladwell, taken from the preface of What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures

I’ve been enjoying this author lately. He has the wonderful ability to write about such varied things as ketchup, hair dye, and the Pill and somehow make these topics so interesting. In this book he examines the thought processes, the research, and the story behind many of these everyday items in our lives. He invites us into the heads of the people who created these things, and makes some very interesting observations along the way. And like he said, he does it in a  pretty engaging way.