Book SummaryDavid and Goliath, by Malcolm Gladwell

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of David and Goliath

In the Biblical story of David and Goliath, a small shepherd boy conquers a giant by slinging a rock at his exposed forehead. We tend to think of David’s victory as a miracle, proof that sometimes, if they’re lucky, the weak can beat the strong.

But what if underdog victories have less to do with luck and more to do with the very circumstances we view as disadvantages? In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell argues that what we assume are disadvantages might actually be advantages, and vice versa.

Gladwell is a journalist who’s written extensively on the intersection of sociology, psychology, and communication. In addition to his work for The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The American Spectator, he’s written books such as Blink, Outliers, and The Tipping Point. In 2005, he was named one of Time Magazine’s most influential people.

In this guide, we’ll discuss the David and Goliath story and how we misunderstand it, the advantages of being the underdog, and the limits of power.

The Story of David and Goliath

To understand the book’s premise, we first need to review the basics of its foundational tale from the Bible:

In the Valley of Elah, the Philistines want to capture the land ruled by the Israelites. The Philistines send their strongest man, the six-foot-nine Goliath, to do battle for them. The only Israelite to volunteer to confront Goliath is a shepherd boy, David. Saul, king of Israel and Judah, offers David a sword and shield, but David refuses them and runs, unprotected, toward Goliath. He slings a rock at Goliath’s exposed forehead before Goliath can react, and as Goliath lies on the ground, stunned, David grabs his sword and kills him.

How We Misunderstand the Story of David and Goliath

We think David’s victory is miraculous, but it’s more probable than we realize. Gladwell argues that David’s perceived disadvantages were actually advantages: He had no armor or sword, but these would have made him clumsy because he wasn’t used to them. He was small, but this allowed him to be fast and agile in his attack. He was a lowly shepherd boy rather than an experienced fighter, but protecting his sheep gave him practice in fatally slinging rocks at lions and bears, excellent preparation for his battle with Goliath.

On the other hand, Goliath’s perceived advantages were actually disadvantages: First, he was a giant, but medical experts believe this was due to a condition called acromegaly that causes an overproduction of human [restricted term]. This condition also causes vision problems, which proved fatal to Goliath, who couldn’t see what David was up to until it was too late.

Second, Goliath had a lot of battle experience, but these prior experiences led him to assume that David would engage with him in traditional hand-to-hand combat. By declining to follow the conventional strategies, David caught him off guard. Third, Goliath was likely wearing and carrying over a hundred pounds of armor and weaponry, but this left him immobile and unable to respond to David’s unconventional tactics.

Why People Don’t Use Underdog Tactics

If underdog tactics are so successful, why doesn’t everyone use them? Gladwell says there are two reasons:

1. Underdog tactics are hard. They often require you to work harder than everyone else. They may call for brain power over brawn. You’ve got to be crafty. You need to be able to break from convention and think outside the box.
2. Underdog tactics make others angry. People don’t like it when you win without playing by their rules. You have to be able to tune out what others think of you.

The Advantages of Being the Underdog

If you feel like the underdog, it may be because you think your shortcomings are obvious disadvantages. But, contrary to common sense, you could use those inadequacies to your advantage. In this section, we’ll discuss the advantages of various “disadvantages”: lacking skills, having less than your opponents, being a big fish in a little pond, having a disability, and living through a traumatic event.

Lacking Skills Can Be an Advantage

The first disadvantage is being unskilled. If you’re really terrible at a game, you can’t follow conventional wisdom and win—you just don’t have the skills. Gladwell suggests that being unskilled (but still in the game) forces you to come up with new approaches to winning. Your skilled opponents (who aren’t as desperate as you are) have no reason to come up with novel strategies because the conventional ones work well for them. Consequently, your opponents are not prepared for your new approach. Taking them by surprise gives you an edge.

For example, David wasn’t skilled with a sword and shield, so he couldn’t battle Goliath the traditional way (the way Goliath was expecting). David had to get creative, using his skill as a slinger to knock Goliath to the ground. Because Goliath wasn’t expecting this tactic, he left himself vulnerable to it.

Having Less Than Your Opponent Can Be an Advantage

The second disadvantage is having less than your opponent. We tend to believe that when something is good (like strength or money), more of it is better. But Goliath’s abundance of size, strength, and...

David and Goliath Summary Introduction: The Story of David and Goliath

For thousands of years, the Biblical story of David and Goliath has given hope to underdogs inspired by David’s miraculous victory against the giant Goliath, with only a rock, sling, and stick at his disposal. The odds were against David...or were they?

In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell argues that we misunderstand underdog victories. We think of David’s small size, shortage of weapons, and lack of battle experience as disadvantages, when these were actually crucial to his success. Gladwell shows us that our various disadvantages--from loss and grief to discrimination and disability--may be advantages in disguise.

Two key ideas run through this tale and throughout the book:

1. Difficulty can be desirable

• When you face seemingly insurmountable difficulties and beat the odds, you cultivate the qualities we most value in society.
• We tend to think of all challenges and deficiencies as disadvantages, but what we assume are disadvantages are often advantages. There are some traits you only develop through adversity, such as unshakable self-confidence and emotional endurance.

**2. We misunderstand underdog...

David and Goliath Summary Chapter 1: The Advantages of Lacking Skill

If you feel like the underdog, it may be because you lack skills that most people consider necessary to win in your field. You likely think of your shortcomings as obvious disadvantages. But, contrary to common sense, what if you could use your inadequacies to your advantage?

Chapters 1-3 have to do with the various advantages of “disadvantages.” In this chapter, we’ll talk about the advantage of lacking skill.

The Advantages of Having No Skill

If you’re really terrible at a game, you can’t follow conventional wisdom and win—you just don’t have the skills. Being unskilled (but still in the game) forces you to come up with new approaches to winning. Your skilled opponents (who aren’t as desperate as you are) have no reason to come up with novel strategies because the conventional ones work well for them. Consequently, your opponents are not prepared for your new approach. Taking them by surprise gives you an edge.

Two stories, one historical and one recent, illustrate situations in which a group’s lack of skill obliged them to implement strategies that were far more effective than the traditional ones.

Example #1: Lawrence of Arabia

At the end of the...

Shortform Exercise: Turn Lack of Skills into a Strength

Reflect on your perceived weaknesses to find their hidden advantages.

Think of a personal or career challenge that felt insurmountable because you felt like you were lacking skills. What was the challenge?

David and Goliath Summary Chapter 2: The Advantages of Having Less Than Your Opponent

Most of us tend to believe that when something is good (like strength, money, or small class sizes), more of it is better. But Goliath’s abundance of size, strength, and weaponry didn’t protect him from David’s rock--it made him more vulnerable. There is a point at which the accumulation of resources ceases to be an advantage and another point at which those resources become a distinct disadvantage. The visual representation of this theory is the inverted-U curve.

The Inverted U-Curve

When you graph the relationship between, say, parenting success and money, or class size and student achievement (two examples we’ll explore more below), the shape is an upside-down U.

For instance, if we wanted to graph the relationship between money and happiness, we could chart wealth on the X-axis and happiness on the Y-axis. Picture the beginning of the inverted-U at the bottom left-hand corner, where the X- and Y-axes meet, at $0 and 0 on the happiness scale. (It’s difficult to be happy when you don’t have money and are just trying to survive.)

As wealth increases, the arch moves...

Shortform Exercise: Find Your Advantage in Moderation

Reflect on the ways your desire for more is holding you back, and how moderation can help you move forward.

Think about something that you love (maybe a food or an activity) or something that you think of as unquestionably positive (perhaps a quality like patience or forgiveness). Can you imagine a point at which there’s too much of it? What would be the result?

David and Goliath Summary Chapter 3: The Advantages of Being a Big Fish in a Little Pond

Would you rather be a “Little Fish in a Big Pond” or a “Big Fish in a Little Pond” of your own choosing?

When applying to college, we want to attend the most prestigious university possible (and, therefore, be Little Fish in a Big Pond). Most would agree, when given a choice between two universities, you should choose the “best” one--the one with the most resources, the most accomplished faculty, the smartest students, and the prestige. But what if attending a “better” school could be a disadvantage?

The Theory of Relative Deprivation

The theory of relative deprivation says we compare ourselves to the people around us. Our feelings of happiness or deprivation, success or failure, are not absolute, but rather relative to how happy and successful our neighbors are.

For example, countries in which citizens consider themselves the happiest (Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Canada) have a higher suicide rate than countries in which citizens consider themselves generally unhappy or neutral. If you’re depressed in a place where everyone around you seems happy, you feel worse. However, if you’re depressed in a place where everyone around you also...

Shortform Exercise: View Your Skills Objectively

Use this exercise to become more aware of how your environment—and the people in it—may be influencing your confidence and keeping you from your goal.

Have you ever felt like a Big Fish in a Little Pond? When?

David and Goliath Summary Chapter 4: Desirable Difficulty #1 - Disability

Part One (Chapters 1-3) discusses how what we perceive to be advantages are often disadvantages, or at least more of a mixed bag than we realize. In Part Two (Chapters 4-6), we see how so-called disadvantages can actually be strong advantages.

Desirable Difficulties

In Part Two we learn about three “desirable difficulties”: disability, tragedy, and having nothing. What makes these, or any difficulties, desirable?

• Not all difficulties are desirable—the students in the bottom third of an elite college do not benefit from feeling demoralized and discouraged from pursuing their dreams.
• On the other hand, not all difficulties (what we perceive as disadvantages) should be avoided. For instance, making a task more difficult can actually increase your chances of success on it.

An experiment involving the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) demonstrates the advantages of a desirable difficulty. The CRT is the shortest intelligence test in the world at three questions long. At Princeton, researchers first gave the test to students in clear, standard font and print size. Students scored an average of 1.9 correct answers out of three. The second time researchers gave...

Shortform Exercise: Compensate for Skills You Lack

There are some difficult situations, like having a learning disability, that you can’t change. But that doesn’t mean they have to hold you back. Reflect on how you have compensated in the past, and how you can compensate in the future, for deficiencies.

Think about a skill that didn’t come easily when you were a kid. What was it? How did you compensate for your deficiency in it?

David and Goliath Summary Chapter 5: Desirable Difficulty #2 - Trauma

The second “desirable difficulty” is trauma.

Courage is not innate; it is something you have to earn. You earn it by surviving something you didn’t think you could survive, or confronting a fear and realizing it’s not as scary as you expected.

Because it can result in courage, trauma actually leaves some people better off than they were before. How does this work?

• If the worst has already happened, you’re freed of fear to some extent. Nothing will ever be as frightening as the realization of your worst fear (an event you somehow survived).
• Overcoming fear leads to a confidence you couldn’t have earned without it. You endure the seemingly unendurable, and then you know you can live through it. It gives you a sense of your own invincibility and power.

Trauma Strengthens Some People and Weakens Others

We tend to believe that trauma affects everyone the same way, and that this effect is universally negative. There are actually 3 general effects of trauma:

• Direct hits: These are people who don’t survive the traumatic event.
  • For example, the casualties of the Blitz, Germany’s bombing campaign of Britain during the Second World War,...

Shortform Exercise: Acknowledge the Upside of Your Fear

As a society, we think of fear as something to be avoided. Use this exercise to reflect on how fear (and, crucially, confronting your fear) has impacted you, both negatively and positively.

Think of a time when you were afraid of something and you confronted that fear. (The fear could be big or small.) How did the experience alter your fear? Did you realize it wasn’t as scary as you expected?

David and Goliath Summary Chapter 6: Desirable Difficulty #3 - Having Nothing

In a fair world, everyone could follow the conventional rules of the game and win. In the world we have, perpetual underdogs occasionally need to break the rules to succeed. To do so, they need to be “disagreeable” in the sense that they can’t care what others think.

If you have an abundance of wealth, status, and material goods, you risk all of it when you play by your own rules rather than society’s. You’re constrained. You have everything to lose.

But if you have very little and you’ve been neglected (or worse) by society, you don’t have anything to lose by bucking tradition and going your own way. This gives you freedom that those with more to lose don’t have.

Example: The American Civil Rights Movement

When the conventional way doesn’t work, try something unconventional. For instance, the leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement had to play by their own rules because society’s didn’t work for them.

Martin Luther King, Jr., and many Civil Rights activists, came from a community that had been enslaved and oppressed for hundreds of years. Being an underdog community for centuries was a clear disadvantage to its members. But it also taught them how to...

Shortform Exercise: Be Tricky and Think Unconventionally

Use the example of leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement to inspire you to tackle tricky problems in unconventional ways.

What problem are you facing right now that conventional approaches just don’t seem to solve? Perhaps you’ve gotten a lot of advice about how to solve the problem, and none of it is working.

David and Goliath Summary Chapter 7: The Limits of Power - The Principle of Legitimacy

Part Three shifts the focus away from the Davids of the world and toward the Goliaths. We’ll discuss two aspects of Goliath’s power that actually make him less powerful: the limits of authority and the negative effects of the overuse of power.

What Goliaths, people with overt power, tend to misunderstand about power is that it has limitations. The traditional hallmarks of power—massive weapons, years of experience, society’s blessing—can only take you so far. The degree to which you are powerful depends, in part, on how much power your “subjects” are willing to give you.

The Principle of Legitimacy

An authority figure’s power over the rest of us is especially limited if we don’t perceive him and his power as being “legitimate.” An authority’s legitimacy is based on three things:

1. We, the subjects, need to have a voice. And we need to believe that those in power care about what we have to say.
2. We need to feel that the law we’re being asked to abide by is predictable.
3. We need to feel that the law and the people enforcing it are fair.

If you’re the one with the power, why does it matter what people think of you?

People become defiant,...

Shortform Exercise: Use Your Power Legitimately

When Goliaths use their power illegitimately, both Goliath and David suffer. Think about the power dynamics in situations in which you’ve been David and situations in which you’ve been Goliath.

Have you ever had a teacher, supervisor, or boss whom you didn’t respect (perceive as legitimate)? How did you react when he or she gave you direction or feedback? What could have the teacher, supervisor, or boss done to make you more willing to cooperate or give your best effort?

David and Goliath Summary Chapter 8: The Limits of Power - The Inverted U

As we learned in Chapter 2, we live in a “U-shaped world,” so we know by now that more power does not necessarily equal more compliance from those over whom we exert it. As Goliaths, using our power helps us. However, overusing (or abusing) our power gets us in trouble. To use our power effectively, we need to use it moderately. We also need to compensate for power’s limitations with forgiveness.

Looking at the relationship between crime and punishment, Chapter 8 demonstrates how forgiveness might be a more appropriate response to a situation than exerting your power.

In particular, we’ll look at how the Inverted U applies to crime and punishment. As a society, we operate on the assumption that the tougher we are on crime, the less crime there will be. This is true up to a certain point, at which an increased severity of punishment ceases to matter. As we move further toward the right side of the inverted U, it’s possible that cracking down on crime actually starts to make the crime situation worse.

The Three Strikes Law

Let’s take a look at an example. California implemented the Three Strikes Law to decrease crime in California. Under the 1994 law, if...

Shortform Exercise: Combine Appropriate Consequences with Forgiveness

Harsher punishments don’t always lead to better results. When you’re in a Goliath position, find ways to make the punishment fit the crime, and pair the punishment with a healthy dose of forgiveness.

Think of a time when you handed a punishment that was too harsh. What was the situation? How did you handle it?

David and Goliath Summary Chapter 9: Summing Up the Limits of Power

Chapter 9 tells the story of the Vichy town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon that openly defied the German Occupation government in France. The narrative ties together themes from throughout the book, including the principle of legitimacy, the advantages of disagreeableness, and the idea that courage can grow out of tragedy. It’s also the ultimate underdog story: A small town dares to challenge the Goliath of Naziism—and wins.

André Trocmé and the Resistance in Vichy

After France fell to Germany in 1940, the French government at Vichy revoked anti-semitism laws, revoked Jews’ rights, took away their jobs, and sent them to internment camps. The government also implemented a range of smaller changes impacting non-Jews: for instance, all school children had to participate in a full fascist salute of the French flag and teachers had to sign a loyalty oath to the state.

The residents of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon refused to comply with any of these new orders.

For centuries, Le Chambon had been a haven for various refugee and outcast groups, primary among them the Huguenots. The local pastor was André Trocmé, a pacifict, and **he preached resistance of any government request that was...

David and Goliath Summary Afterword: Konrad Kellen

Gladwell’s Afterword addresses one of the biggest questions posed by the book: If Davids beat Goliaths all the time, why hasn’t that changed the way we view “David and Goliath” situations?

• It’s counter-intuitive. The assumption that the bigger, stronger, wealthier, more weaponized side has to win is instinctive and goes against conventional wisdom. It’s hard to wrap your head around the idea that the victory of a small, weaponless shepherd boy over an experienced, armored giant is not only possible but probable.
• It’s easiest to measure advantage by what we can see: the number of soldiers, the amount of money, the available weapons and material resources. It’s harder to look below the surface to evaluate the less tangible or clear-cut advantages of disagreeability, deficiency, and trauma. Furthermore, disagreeability, deficiency, and trauma are painful. We’re wired to link pain with disadvantage, so we don’t as readily see pain’s advantages.

The Afterword looks at how these play out in the opposing views of two political scientists analyzing the Vietnam War. Leon Gouré was certain the U.S. military (Goliath) would be victorious over the Viet Cong...