Originals is a nonfiction book by Adam Grant explaining the psychological phenomenons behind some of relevantly recent history’s greatest successes, most embarrassing failures, and significant events in the technical world, the business world, and politics. The stories range in topics from the Segway, women’s suffrage, and Warby Parker, a website that sells glasses made by Adam Grant’s former students at the University of Pennsylvania. Grant’s explanations behind certain events are quite interesting especially when he describes how the tv show Seinfeld came to be. You see, despite being one of the most successful shows of all time, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David’s original pitch of “a show about nothing” was originally rejected by networks, and ended up being picked up by an executive who didn’t even work with comedies at that point. There are many more stand out stories in the book similar to this, and Adam Grant's explanation of how they came to be using psychological concepts is quite interesting.
One question the reader must ask themselves, is the reason why I enjoy this book so much because of the stories themselves, or how Grant words them and relates them to his general point. For me at least, the answer is both. While Grant has a knack for reiterating pop culture legend or information in a social studies textbook, Originals wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining and thought provoking if it was simply just a printed out wikipedia page. With Grant’s in depth explanations, reasonings, and connections, this book not only intellectually stimulates the reader, but also makes the reader recognize Grant’s intelligence and possibly their own intelligence as well. Overall, if I were to rate this book I would give it a decent to strong 8 out of 10.
When I first thought about a book that touches on moments in history in detail, I thought of a normal textbook but it seems interesting how Grant was able to keep things interesting. The book seems interesting because of the wide topics Grant is able to tough on and give deep explanation to. This book seems like one that has a something for everyone to be interested in.
ReplyDeleteI think this book would be interesting for a lot of people who enjoy learning about history. Since this book talks about history's great successes, failures, events, business, and etc. The book seems good to me, I would love reading about the great successes and all of the events.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of a book that discusses a wide variety of topics in recent history. As someone who like to learn about random and interesting things in my free time this book seems appealing to me, and it seems like this book has something for everyone, whether you're into science and business, or even tv sitcoms. Grant's idea to combine random facts seemed to work as many people, including myself, are interested in what this book has to offer.
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