David and Goliath: Chapter 4: David Boies Summary & Analysis

Gladwell turns his attention to dyslexia, a brain disorder that makes it difficult for people to distinguishes various sounds from one another. Dyslexia can also impact the way people learn to read, since it’s harder for people to grasp certain words on the page if they have “no concept of the sounds of language.” Taking this into consideration, Gladwell posits that nobody would wish dyslexia on their child, but he immediately challenges this notion by calling into question what, exactly, people tend to see as a disadvantage. He has already considered various advantages, he says, so now he wants to explore the things people think of as disadvantageous. In doing so, he references a concept known as “desirable difficulties,” suggesting that certain challenges sometimes have positive effects. 

To outline the concept of “desirable difficulty,” Gladwell presents readers with two questions, both of which comprise the world’s shortest intelligence test, which is known as the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). The questions are as follows: 1. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Answer: the ball costs $0.05. 2. If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? Answer: it would take five minutes. Though seemingly straightforward, people often get these questions wrong because they measure the test taker’s ability to recognize when something “is more complex than it appears.” The Yale professor who invented this test gave it to students at nine different colleges, and their results were in keeping with their scores on other intelligence tests. On average, Harvard students only get 1.43 of the questions correct, proving that the test is quite hard. Strangely, though, people end up scoring better on the CRT if the test becomes a little harder. In a study at Princeton, the questions were written in a font that was difficult to read, and the average overall score increased to 2.45 from 1.9.

Gladwell argues that the reason Princeton students did better on the CRT when it was harder to read is that it forced them to work just a little more than they would have otherwise. This, he says, is a “desirable difficulty,” or one that brings about positive results. Needless to say, not all challenges are desirable, as evidenced by Caroline Sacks’s experience at Brown. With this in mind, Gladwell asks if dyslexia might be a desirable difficulty and, to answer his own question, points out that one third of all successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. Gladwell hypothesizes that this kind of success isn’t in spite of a person’s struggle against dyslexia, but because of it. 

Gladwell introduces David Boies, a man who grew up in rural Illinois and had a hard time in school from a very early age. Nobody knew it at the time, but he suffers from dyslexia, and to this day he has trouble reading because it takes him so long to get through even short passages. Fresh out of high school (which he barely finished), he took a job as a construction worker and eventually got married. When his wife became pregnant, though, she urged Boies to pursue more lucrative professions and the advanced degrees he’d need to do so. Deciding to go to law school, Boies attended to the University of Redlands, which Gladwell says was a small pond in which Boies could “excel.” While taking classes, Boies learned he could apply to law school without graduating college (something that is no longer the case).

Boies starts as a student at Northwestern Law School, and though his courses require quite a bit of reading, he manages to find synopses of important Supreme Court Cases that enable him to pass his classes. What’s more, his listening abilities are far more useful than his peers’, so he ends up getting more out of his professors’ lectures than anyone else; while everyone is busy furiously taking notes (and consequently missing certain points), Boies manages to absorb everything his professors say. This leads him to such great success that he ends up transferring to Yale Law School.

After law school, Boies decides to become a litigator instead of practicing corporate law, since corporate lawyers have to do a lot of reading to prepare for their cases. Litigators, on the other hand, have to be quick-witted and responsive. This plays to Boies’s strengths because he’s so good at listening and compensating for his hindered reading skills. Not being able to read well effectively helps Boies hone his listening skills, turning him into an attentive prosecutor capable of picking up on important details and subtleties during cross-examinations. In this capacity, he becomes one of the most respected and high-profile litigators in the United States, taking on famous cases.

There are, Gladwell notes, several traits that psychologists consider when “measur[ing] personality”: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Innovators, Gladwell says, have to be open to new ideas. They also have to have a very specific kind of agreeability—namely, they have to be disagreeable. This doesn’t mean they have to be rude, but that they need to be willing to “do things that others might disapprove of.” Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, is a perfect example of somebody who is disagreeable. He is an innovative man who thought to sell disassembled furniture in the 1950s, a time when such a thing was unheard of. Moreover, his business was edged out of Sweden because other furniture companies instigated a boycott of the brand. In response, Kamprad took his business to Poland, where he was able to manufacture furniture without any roadblocks.

Gladwell points out that Poland was a communist country and that Kamprad brought his company there at a tumultuous time. It was 1961, the Cold War was becoming increasingly serious, the Berlin Wall was being erected, and the Cuban Missile Crisis would soon bring itself to bear on the world. Going to Poland at this time, Gladwell argues, would be like starting a company in North Korea right now. But even though most people wouldn’t have dreamed of “doing business in the land of the enemy for fear of being branded a traitor,” Kamprad didn’t care. This, Gladwell notes, is evidence of Kamprad’s disagreeability. And though something like dyslexia doesn’t simply turn people into innovators, it’s possible that it could make people just a bit more disagreeable.

Gladwell introduces Gary Cohn, a man who—like David Boies—had a hard time in school. Cohn is dyslexic and was held back a grade as a result, though this didn’t help him learn to read. He was even expelled from elementary school for fighting back when the teacher put him under her desk and kicked him. Still, he worked very hard, though nobody considered this because they thought of him as nothing but a disruptive presence. Finally, though, Cohn graduated high school and got a job selling window frames and aluminum siding. While on a business trip to Long Island one day, he convinced his manager to let him have the day off, and Cohn made his way to Wall Street, where he was determined to find a job. 

In the lobby of the commodities exchange, Cohn waits to see if he’ll be able to talk to somebody. Finally, he hears a well-dressed man loudly telling another person that he has to leave because he’s on his way to LaGuardia airport. Upon hearing this, Cohn jumps in an elevator with this man and says he’s going to the airport, too. The man agrees to share a cab with him, giving Cohn a full hour to convince him to hire him. This man, it turns out, works at one of the biggest brokerage firms on Wall Street and has been appointed to run a new business buying and selling options. And though Cohn doesn’t know anything about options, it seems that the other man doesn’t either, so Cohn lies and says he’s an expert. By the time they reach LaGuardia, the man tells Cohn to call him on Monday. 

Cohn calls the man on Monday, and they schedule an interview. In the meantime, Cohn reads a book about “strategic investments” and learns about options trading—a difficult task, since it takes him six hours to read just 22 pages. Thinking back, Cohn notes that he never told his boss that he knew essentially nothing about options trading before starting at the company. However, it didn’t matter because he was ready by the time he started in his position. Gladwell suggests that most people wouldn’t have gotten into the taxi with the powerful Wall Street executive. Cohn, however, had nothing to lose. Cohn himself says that his childhood made him “comfortable with failure,” which is a common feeling among dyslexic people because they face so many challenges early in their lives. Gary Cohn is now the president of Goldman Sachs.