Comment 56839

By Borrelli (registered) | Posted January 18, 2011 at 13:00:20

Kingwell and Potter are both products of what must be a pretty decent Philosophy department at U of T. I'm not sure how well they know each other, but I imagine they must--Potter wrote an interesting response to a Kingwell piece published in the Walrus last year on the subject of civility in politics.

While I'm pretty confident in the quality of Kingwell's work, as Better Living was often brought into class by my sociology profs back in undergrad, I'm a little more leery of Potter--he's too eager to use a timely, if not totally appropriate analogue to prove a point. He reminds me of a slightly more uppity, less evidence-based Malcolm Gladwell in a lot of ways. And I suppose judging by Potter's evaluation of Gladwell, that it takes one to know one:

Potter wrote:

In the end though, I was left with the same sense of admiration, but also the same gnawing frustration, that I get from reading Gladwell’s books and essays. At his best, Gladwell takes ideas from academia – mostly psychology and social research — and packages them in insightful examples wrapped in brisk, direct prose. [...]

Too often for comfort though, Gladwell slips into a intellectual mode where he states truisms and generalities in a very earnest way, that makes it sound like he thinks he’s really on to something.

Comment edited by Borrelli on 2011-01-18 13:02:14

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