"David and Goliath" by Malcom Gladwell, a book about asymmetrical conflicts and why underdogs sometimes win. It's a collection of stories about where the stronger force should dominate but did not, where a disadvantage should have been an obstacle but was not, and various other similar unexpected outcomes. Reading through each chapter reveals why the unexpected or counterintuitive result all had reasonable explanations.
The stories of the asymmetric conflicts were all fairly interesting to read, and the reason they are interesting is because the underdogs won. David being defeated by Goliath probably makes a boring story, but David unexpectedly defeating Goliath is something else. Many such stories are collected in this book, and just reading those stories might have been worth the time.
The extra value added by this book is explaining why those outcomes should not have been unexpected at all. In a sense, this is a spoilsport book. For example: there would be an emotional story about a tragic murder, followed by the crusade of the father determined to stop similar tragedies in the future. This resulted in California's Three-strikes Law of 1994, with noticeable drop in crime rate in the following years. Most other books would stop here, it seems like a complete story with a good ending. But this book continues on, warned the perils of excessive power, and explained why this Three-strikes Law got toned down in 2012. The original story is ruined a bit, but the twist is worth knowing.
Every chapter opens with an interesting story and closes with a lesson to be learned, with copious data in between to back all the claims. Overall, it has been very refreshing to read, and should come handy to everyone who will invariably be on one side of an asymmetric conflict.
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