Author, journalist, cultural commentator and intellectual adventurer, Malcolm Gladwell was born in 1963 in England to a Jamaican mother and an English mathematician father. He grew up in Canada and graduated with a degree in history from the University of Toronto in 1984. From 1987 to 1996, he was a reporter for the Washington Post, first as a science writer and then as New York City bureau chief. Since 1996, he has been a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine. His curiosity and breadth of interests are shown in New Yorker articles ranging over a wide array of subjects including early childhood development and the flu, not to mention hair dye, shopping and what it takes to be cool. His first book The Tipping Point captured the world's attention with its theory that a curiously small change can have unforeseen effects, and the phrase has become part of our language, used by writers, politicians and business people everywhere to describe cultural trends and strange phenomena. His other international bestselling books are Blink, which explores how a snap judgement can be far more effective than a cautious decision, and Outliers, which looks at the stories of exceptional individuals and reveals the secrets of their success.
Gladwell's range is impressive and his writing never less than engaging FT The pieces form a dazzling record of Gladwell's art Guardian Make your social commentary sparkle with Malcolm Gladwell's latest Sunday Times He's able to examine what look like the most mundane aspects of our daily lives and to reveal the cleverness - and the strangeness - within Sunday Telegraph Vibrant, colourful and packed with surprises Guardian Gladwell soars high Spectator