David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

All good parents try to teach their children the art of persuasion, of course. But a normal, well-adjusted child has no need to ...

strength turned out to be the perfect preparation for the profession he ended up in. Grazer is now one of the most successful mo ...

5. Let’s dig a little deeper into this strange association between what is essentially a neurological malfunction and career suc ...

prestigious art show on earth. Dyslexics are outsiders as well. They are forced to stand apart from everyone else at school beca ...

Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous versus secure/confident) Extraversion (energetic/gregarious versus solitary/reserved) Openness (i ...

that innovators and revolutionaries tend to have a very particular mix of these traits—particularly the last three: openness, co ...

Five personality inventory, “agreeableness,” they tend to be on the far end of the continuum. They are people willing to take so ...

the social structure, you’re not going to put your ideas forward.” As the playwright George Bernard Shaw once put it: “The reaso ...

hadn’t yet been assembled, shipped it cheaply in flat boxes, and undersold all his competitors. In the mid-1950s, however, Kampr ...

connection work. It wasn’t easy. Poland in the 1960s was a mess. It was a Communist country. It had none of the infrastructure o ...

at its peak. Within a year, East and West would come to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The equivalent ...

backwater. But to be creative and conscientious and have the strength of mind to defy the Cold War? That’s rare. Dyslexia doesn’ ...

6. Gary Cohn grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, in northeast Ohio. His family was in the electrical contracting business. This wa ...

under her desk and rolled her chair in and started kicking me. So I pushed the chair back, hit her in the face, and walked out. ...

setting, and everyone thinks you’re an idiot, so you try to do funny things to try to create some social esteem. You’d try to ge ...

will be if he graduates high school. Then he can go drive a truck, but at least he’ll have a high school degree.’” On the day he ...

and had become interested in trading. He headed to the commodities exchange, which was part of the old World Trade Center comple ...

get to the airport.’ I jump in the elevator, and I say, ‘I hear you’re going to LaGuardia.’ He says, ‘Yeah.’ I say, ‘Can we shar ...

When he said, ‘Do you know what an option is?’ I said, ‘Of course I do, I know everything, I can do anything for you.’ Basically ...

repeating sentences until he was sure he understood them. When he started at work, he was ready. “I literally stood behind him a ...