Gladwell once again grabs a fascinating idea and runs with it, in this case the notion that the underdog freed from convention and enabled by independent thinking, early challenges, and unorthodox notions has an advantage in struggles with the powerful.  It’s a good idea and one that he supports with conventional psychology and contemporary examples.  Beginning with a girls basketball team that uses a full court press all the time and reaches the national championship despite a lack of talent and height and finishing with the French resistance based on centuries of Heugenot practice, from the different responses of parents to the murder of their children (California’s Three Strikes Law vs the Mennonite forgiveness), the success of dyslexic children becoming major business leaders, the paradox of crime fighting with love and too small classrooms, Gladwell makes a compelling case though his scientific examples of the u-shaped value curve are more convincing than some of his human interest stories.  A good read.