When we think of David and Goliath, we think of a young man, not very big, who has a fight with a terrifying opponent, and wins. We think of David as puny and Goliath as towering and strong — not to mention heavily armed. We see David’s victory as something that happened against all odds. The story of David and Goliath is, as Malcolm Gladwell puts it, ‘a metaphor for improbable victory’. Well, that’s how we think about it, anyway. But the thing is, apparently, we’ve got it all wrong.
Gladwell, one of the most influential non-fiction writers in the world, often asks his reader to take a closer look at things. In The Tipping Point, his subject was epidemics. If you study epidemics, he showed us, you can gain insight into lots of other things — like, say, the American Revolution, or the behaviour of consumers. In his next book, Blink, he explained human intuition — how it can work brilliantly, and how it sometimes fails. In Outliers, he showed us that the most successful people are often the people who try hardest. These books are full of human stories, all beautifully told— Gladwell has a wonderfully clear prose style. He wants to tell us how the world works, and how, if you study it carefully, you can increase your chances of coming out on top.
We know David came out on top. That’s because, in single combat, a guy with a deadly projectile weapon is likely to beat a guy who is weighed down with armour. Goliath wasn’t very mobile. He wore a heavy helmet and shin pads made of bronze. David, on the other hand, was a ‘slinger’. Gladwell tells us about slingers in antiquity. They used a contraption made from leather strings and a leather pouch, which they whizzed around their heads, and then let go.
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