Author Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian born in England to English and Jamaican parents. He came to writing because it was “fun,” having been rejected by all the advertising agencies he applied to (xiv). His first job was at the conservative magazine American Spectator in Indiana; then, from 1987-1996, he covered science and business for The Washington Post before becoming a staff writer for The New Yorker in 1996. At The New Yorker, he has pursued the mission of fun—not in the sense that he writes on exclusively jovial subjects but in that he follows his personal interests, no matter how esoteric, above trending topics.

Gladwell, who was named one of Time’s most influential people in 2005 and in 2011 won the Order of Canada, has gained a reputation for being an independent thinker who can take evidence that would normally be interpreted one way and reach his own conclusions, in addition to finding stories of triumph, failure, and intrigue in places where others would not expect them. Rather than framing himself as a specialist in any one area, Gladwell prefers to straddle spheres as diverse as business, foreign policy, and the everyday, drawing examples from different points in history to explore the fundamentals of the human condition, such as interpretation of data, decision-making, and learning from mistakes.