
Read by Malcolm Gladwell

The Malcolm Gladwell book recommendations collected here come from the New Yorker staff writer and author of The Tipping Point and Outliers, who turns social science and history into narratives that upend how we see the world. Eighteen titles are drawn from his columns and reviews for The New Yorker, The Week and The Guardian, appearances on The Tim Ferriss Show, and the blurbs he offers other writers. Psychology, society and biography lead the list. The book he credits most is Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett's The Person and the Situation, which he says changed his life and offered the template for the genre The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers belong to. He calls Michael Lewis's The Blind Side as close to perfect as any work of nonfiction, and rereads Janet Malcolm to remind himself how nonfiction is supposed to be done. Gladwell has also authored eight books of his own.
Last updated March 2026 · Every recommendation cited to its original source.
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His 18 recommendations include The Person and the Situation by Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett, Michael Lewis's The Blind Side, Freakonomics, Janet Malcolm's Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, and Roger Martin's The Opposable Mind.
Gladwell credits The Person and the Situation, saying it changed his life and that reading it reveals the template for the genre of books that The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers belong to.
They come from his writing for The New Yorker, The Week and The Guardian, interviews on The Tim Ferriss Show, posts on Twitter, and endorsements he has written for books he admires.
Yes. Gladwell has authored eight titles featured here, including The Tipping Point, Outliers, Blink, Talking to Strangers, David and Goliath, The Bomber Mafia, and Revenge of the Tipping Point.
His picks favor psychology and human behavior, society and politics, and biography and memoir, with business and science titles reflecting his interest in how systems, judgment and storytelling intersect.