>> did you end up enjoying a? >> esca microcredit. >> the living memories is not exactly systematic system. ..

is more poetic and it has me holding up a jar containing an insect, inspecting this insect. >> why different covers? why would that sell in england? >> i have no idea. i actually like both covers and i'm quite happy to have both of them out there. >> and appetite for wonder the making of the scientist. richard dawkins is the author. it will be in bookstores in september of 2013. this is booktv on c-span2. >> malcolm gladwell what's your new book about? >> it's called "david and goliath" underdogs, misfits and the art of battling giants and it's about underdogs. i got really interested in telling the stories of people who seem weak and powerless and yet go on to accomplish great things.

and that was a puzzle of how they managed to do that i thought was worthy of a book ,-com,-com ma and so this is my latest. >> back in 09 you 09 you wrote a piece for "the new yorker." david versus goliath and i will let you tell the story but is that when your interest started? >> yeah although i would say nothing in that article that i wrote for "the new yorker" made its way into the book but it is what got me thinking about it. it was an article i wrote about a guy starting with the guy who is an indian immigrant living in silicon valley and starts to coach his daughter's basketball team. they're all 12, 13 and they are all the daughters of silicon valley and they can't pass, shoot, dribble. they can do anything that resembles basketball so he decided what they were going to do was play maniacal defense. they are going to have a full-court press 100% of every game and that proves so

devastatingly effective that they go all the way to the national championship so the idea that he's responded to weakness the fact that they had no basketball skills by adapting and adapting in a way that proved to be devastating and by breaking the rules because people don't expect 12-year-old girls to play the go full-court. the skill level as such at that stage that if you play the press can get the ball off the court, right? is this really interesting example of someone who chose to rather than remain passive in the face of some kind of weakness to adapt. that adaptation is what really this book is about. what are the strategies people use to respond to their own shortcomings. >> which one of the examples do you use in the book? >> for example in talking about dyslexia. i have a whole chapter on why

are so many successful entrepreneurs dyslexic? it's a neurological problem. it's a deficit. it's a part of your brain that is not working properly. it is nothing you would wish upon a child and yet in one case after another many the most famous entrepreneurs we know have lived their whole lives with this devastating disorder and if you talk to them they will tell you that they succeeded not in spite of this disorder but because of it. that it taught them something about how to deal with the world and that proved to be incredibly valuable -- valuable in their career. there is something very beautiful about those and very moving about those kinds of stories. i tell a couple of them and it's a beautiful illustration of this sort of paradox i am interested in describing which is very often we learn more from our disadvantages than we do from

our advantages. >> malcolm gladwell is there any connection between david and goliath tipping point and outliers? >> i wish there were. i wish there were some grand unfolding narrative so i could argue if he owned one you owned one you had to own them all but i don't think there is. i think they happen to be what i was interested in at the time and i suppose they are all answers to the question, why does the world surprise us? why does the world not work the the way the way we expect? status the theme i keep coming back to. >> how long do you sit with an idea? >> a long time. i mean i think about a book for years before i start writing it. i don't think if you are going to ask the reader to commit a big chunk of their life to your book you have to correspondingly commit a big chunk of your life to that book.

in other words you can expect people to make the investment in you if you don't take your time, so i take, i thought about this one and collected ideas for years before he started writing it. >> some of the david and goliath stories we have heard our military stories, the viet cong versus the u.s. army. are those included at all in your book? >> the book starts with me retelling the actual david and goliath stories which is not what you think. it's very different in reality than it has been and then i tell stories about a guy who understood very early on that the viet kang was not who he thought they were but they weren't going to give up easily and no one would listen to him. it's because the military was not, the american military in those years like all of us i think had difficulty with the notion that someone could be

without obvious strengths, without money men and weapons anything and still be fermentable and my book says the opposite. don't be fooled by the armor someone is wearing. what matters is the man inside the armor. >> how did the tipping point change your life? >> well i mean i suppose it put me on the map as a writer. and so it paid for the way for the success of my other books. it didn't change me personally. it just made my life, my professional life a little easier. people i suppose returned my phonecalls a little faster than they used to. but it didn't turn me into a different person for which i'm thankful so it was just such a bizarre and happy accident that will did so well and i've been

grateful ever since. >> do you look at your bookstore do people look at your book says perhaps self-help books or business primer's? >> well you know all great books are self-help books meaning that they encourage us to look more closely at ourselves and what we think and how we behave and so that says they are. they are not how to change your life in seven easy steps but the reason i write them as i want people to take a step back and say, and just rethink their own experience to say that had not occurred to me or oh that is how i make sense of that or that sheds a whole new light on something that has happened to to me. >> malcolm gladwell there is a recent goliath's are goliath's and that is because they are successful. how do they maintain their success? >> that's a great question. the first half of my book is

devoted to the ways that goliath's shoot themselves in the foot. the acquisition of success as the seeds for failure and breaking out of that cycle is very very difficult. every single day we look around and we see once mighty institutions falling. the camera that is recording the show is by sony. sony was once the mightiest electronics company in the world and last year they lost 8.5 odeon dollars and some have shut down electronics division. that has happened in 10 years. they have gone from the top of the heap to a situation where people say openly they should pack it in. you know, this country and we talk about vietnam. there has never been an individual country as powerful as america was in 1964 and what happened over the next 10 years? >> at phnom. we were humbled. so i mean there is something i

think profoundly humbling about what happens to giants, to goliath's and to be someone in a position of great authority and power is a more precarious position then i think most people realize. >> why do you goliath's shoot themselves in the foot? >> well there are many reasons. i explore just a couple. one of the same strategies that made them great will keep them great and that's not true. and two as they underestimate just how useful the struggle was, how creative it is. when you don't have enough, when your business could shut down tomorrow, when you are constantly at the very end of your wits, in some cases you

fold and diet but if you don't, you learn how to be innovative and to take chances and to take risks and do all kinds of things that are you are propelled to do all kinds of things you would normally do. when you get comfortable you are no longer under that compulsion and that is a huge, that's a huge transition that many organizations or individuals can make. they simply, they forgot how useful their old disadvantage was. >> are there lessons to be learned by the american political system from "david and goliath"? >> you know as a canadian i am very wary of -- the american political system. i don't i don't know there ther. i'm a minority in this but someone from -- not from this country i'm always impressed at

how good our political system is. look around the world. is there one you would trade for the american system? >> nonof them are perfect. ours is an perfect. isn't perfect. it's pretty good and we all pay our taxes. people want to come here so i don't think there is anything. it's doing a good job. >> are rus citizen? >> i remain a cub -- canadian. >> malcolm gladwell when does "david and goliath" hit the stands? >> the beginning of october, october 1 of this year. >> this is booktv on c-span2 previewing malcolm gladwell's newest book "david and goliath" october 2013. it hits the bookstores -- thanks for watching booktv.

what are you reading this summer? >> the first book on my summer reading list is something that i have read already called a victory lap the secret science of winning campaigns by sasha eisenberg and it's about how people need data and analytics to make their decisions so it covers how the campaigns work in terms of talking and communication and this is the hidden side, really the doings that happen and it's an important book to read. that was the first thing on my summer reading list. the second book on my summer reading list is a biography of tip o'neill by john farrell. he is a terrific writer. it's an older book but i think it's the perfect thing to read. tip o'neill would be an absolutely terrific book. it won awards when it came out. the third look is lean in by

cheryl stamberg of facebook. it's about women in the workplace and how they can succeed in how they should succeed and it seems like an important book to read. as a huge baseball fan i can't go with summer without reading a baseball book. one is the art of healing. the art of fielding. the fifth book is guilty pleasure reading that i haven't done yet and i've put off which is game of thrones. it's a very popular tv show, huge book series. my book fear is when to start reading the books you have to read all of them. it i may try to tackle the first ones this summer. >> from the 2013 "chicago tribune" printers row lit fest

paul reid sits down to talk about his book "the last lion." mr. reid co-authored the book with historian william manchester who while in failing health asked mr. reid to finish the third and final volume on winston churchill. mr. manchester passed away in 2004. [applause] >> thank you very much and thank you all for turning out on a sunday morning for this event. i'm excited to be here with paul reid. we met before and we have talked before and we are both churchill buff so it's a pleasure to see them again and paul thank you for coming out to chicago. we are going to talk for maybe 40 minutes and there will be plenty time for questions so i hope you can keep that in mind and we will hear from as many people as possible. paul will be signing books so feel free to talk to him after. paul is really a wonderful guy. on top of that he is a journalist who got his start in journalism after a career manufacturing