Reading List

Authors Like Malcolm Gladwell

Q: Does Malcolm Gladwell have a new book?

Yes. The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic was published by Little, Brown on 29 September 2026. It asks why gun violence in the United States has been so hard to solve, and grew out of his Revisionist History episodes.

Q: Which Malcolm Gladwell book should I read first?

Outliers (2008) is the most widely read and the easiest way in. The Tipping Point (2000) is the book that made his name; he revisited its idea in Revenge of the Tipping Point (2024).

Q: What should I read after Outliers?

K. Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool’s Peak (2016), which explains the deliberate-practice research behind the 10,000-hour rule, and David Epstein’s Range (2019), which makes the case for specialising late.

Malcolm Gladwell was born in Fareham, Hampshire, in 1963 and was six when his family moved to Elmira, Ontario, a Mennonite community. He studied history at the University of Toronto and has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1996. The Tipping Point (2000) argued that ideas and behaviour spread like epidemics; Blink (2005) was about snap judgements; Outliers (2008) made the ‘10,000-hour rule’ a household phrase, a simplification disputed by the psychologist whose research it drew on. In 2016 he started the podcast Revisionist History, and on 29 September 2026 he published The American Way of Killing, on gun violence in the United States. The ten writers below share his method or argue with it: a surprising story first, then a piece of research that changes how you see it.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Narrative nonfiction · Social science · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Malcolm Gladwell, start with Michael Lewis, who tells big ideas through a few unforgettable characters. For the research behind Blink, and a more cautious view of intuition, read Daniel Kahneman. For the counter-argument to Outliers, read David Epstein’s Range. The list also includes writers from Sweden, the Netherlands and Wales.

10 authors like Malcolm Gladwell

The psychology of yes

Robert Cialdini

American · Influence (1984), Pre-Suasion (2016)

Cialdini is a social psychologist who spent most of his career at Arizona State University. For Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion he combined laboratory experiments with time spent undercover in sales, fundraising and advertising, and identified six principles of persuasion, including reciprocity, scarcity and social proof; a seventh, unity, was added in a later edition.

Influence did, sixteen years before The Tipping Point, what Gladwell does: turn social psychology into stories readers recognise from their own lives. Cialdini is more systematic and less anecdotal, and he went undercover to test what he wrote about.

— Lisanne

Every book by Robert Cialdini →

Intuition, under the microscope

Daniel Kahneman

Israeli-American · Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

Kahneman (1934–2024) was a psychologist who, with Amos Tversky, showed how human judgement departs from rational choice; he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002. Thinking, Fast and Slow sets out two modes of thought, a fast intuitive one and a slow deliberate one, and the biases that follow. Its chapter on priming relied on studies that later failed to replicate, which Kahneman acknowledged.

Read Kahneman after Blink. Gladwell celebrates the expert’s snap judgement; Kahneman shows in detail how fast thinking misleads us, and when it can be trusted. He is denser and more rigorous, and the best corrective for anyone who took Blink too literally.

— Lisanne

Every book by Daniel Kahneman →

The outsider who saw it first

Michael Lewis

American · Moneyball (2003), The Big Short (2010), The Undoing Project (2016)

Lewis worked as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers before writing Liar’s Poker (1989). Moneyball follows the Oakland Athletics as they use statistics to find undervalued baseball players; The Undoing Project tells the story of the partnership between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. His 2023 book about the crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, Going Infinite, was criticised by some reviewers as too sympathetic to its subject.

The closest match for Gladwell’s storytelling: Lewis finds the outsider who saw what the experts missed and builds a whole argument around them. He stays with one cast of characters for a whole book where Gladwell moves between many, but readers of Outliers will recognise Moneyball at once.

— Lisanne

Every book by Michael Lewis →

Curiosity, with jokes

Mary Roach

American · Stiff (2003), Packing for Mars (2010), Grunt (2016)

Roach writes popular science books built on visits to the laboratories and people studying odd subjects. Stiff follows what happens to human bodies donated to science; Packing for Mars looks at the strange business of preparing people for space, and Grunt at the science of keeping soldiers alive.

Roach shares Gladwell’s gift for the odd question that opens up a whole field, and his habit of going to meet the researchers. She is more interested in the body than in society, and much funnier.

— Lisanne

Every book by Mary Roach →

One assumption, overturned

Susan Cain

American · Quiet (2012), Bittersweet (2022)

Cain worked as a corporate lawyer before writing Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, which argues that schools and workplaces are built for extroverts and undervalue people who think before they speak. Bittersweet is about sorrow and longing as sources of creativity and connection.

Cain uses Gladwell’s method — research and stories in alternation — to overturn one common assumption, as David and Goliath does with the idea of advantage. Her tone is more personal: she writes as an introvert herself.

— Lisanne

Every book by Susan Cain →

The business-school Gladwell

Adam Grant

American · Give and Take (2013), Originals (2016), Think Again (2021)

Grant is an organisational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Give and Take divides people into givers, takers and matchers and uses workplace research to argue that givers are over-represented at both the bottom and the top of success. Think Again is about the skill of changing your mind.

Grant writes the most Gladwell-like books to come out of a business school: a counter-intuitive claim, then studies and stories to back it. He is more prescriptive than Gladwell and more likely to end a chapter with what you should do.

— Lisanne

Every book by Adam Grant →

The reply to Outliers

David Epstein

American · The Sports Gene (2013), Range (2019)

Epstein is a former Sports Illustrated and ProPublica journalist. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World argues that in many fields people who sample widely and specialise late do better than early specialists, and questions how far lessons from chess and golf apply elsewhere. His third book, Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better, came out in 2026.

Epstein argues with Outliers on its own ground. The Sports Gene questions the 10,000-hour story, and Range opens by setting Tiger Woods, who specialised as a toddler, against Roger Federer, who played many sports first. Read him as the companion and counterweight to Gladwell.

— Lisanne

Every book by David Epstein →

The researcher behind the 10,000 hours

K. Anders Ericsson

Swedish · Peak (2016, with Robert Pool)

Ericsson (1947–2020) was a Swedish psychologist at Florida State University whose research on expert performance gave us the term ‘deliberate practice’: focused work on technique, with clear goals and immediate feedback. His studies of violinists were the source of the ‘10,000-hour rule’ popularised by Gladwell, a simplification Ericsson disputed. Peak, written with the science writer Robert Pool, is his account for general readers.

The research behind the most famous idea in Outliers, told by the man who did it. Peak explains why the number was never a rule and what deliberate practice actually involves, which makes it the essential correction to Gladwell’s chapter.

— Lisanne

Every book by K. Anders Ericsson →

The Dutch historian of hope

Rutger Bregman

Dutch · Utopia for Realists (2014), Humankind (2019), Moral Ambition (2024)

Bregman was born in 1988 and studied history at Utrecht University. Humankind (in Dutch, De meeste mensen deugen) argues that most people are more decent than we assume, and revisits famous experiments such as the Stanford prison experiment to argue that they were flawed. Moral Ambition urges talented people to work on the world’s biggest problems. All three are available in English.

Bregman uses Gladwell’s tools — a famous study retold, then turned upside down — to argue for a hopeful view of human nature. Humankind sits well beside Talking to Strangers, which also asks why we misjudge other people.

— Lisanne

Every book by Rutger Bregman →

One strange idea, followed to the end

Jon Ronson

Welsh · The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004), The Psychopath Test (2011), So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (2015)

Ronson was born in Cardiff in 1967 and made his name in radio, television and The Guardian. The Men Who Stare at Goats, about the US Army’s interest in the paranormal, was filmed in 2009. In The Psychopath Test he learns a psychopathy checklist and starts seeing psychopaths everywhere; So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed meets people whose lives were wrecked by online pile-ons.

Ronson shares Gladwell’s habit of following one strange idea through interviews with the people it touches, but he puts his own anxiety into the story and is warier of neat conclusions. Read him after Talking to Strangers.

— Lisanne

Every book by Jon Ronson →

Where to start if you loved Malcolm Gladwell

If you loved Outliers, read David Epstein.

Range: the case for generalists, and the limits of the 10,000-hour story.

If you loved Blink, read Daniel Kahneman.

Thinking, Fast and Slow: when snap judgements work, and when they fail.

If you loved The Tipping Point, read Robert Cialdini.

Influence: the psychology of why people say yes.

If you loved Talking to Strangers, read Jon Ronson.

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed: what happens when strangers judge each other at scale.

If you want more Gladwell, start with his first three books.

The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005) and Outliers (2008), then his newest, The American Way of Killing (2026).

Frequently asked questions about authors like Malcolm Gladwell

Who writes like Malcolm Gladwell?

Michael Lewis, Daniel Kahneman and David Epstein are the closest: Lewis for storytelling, Kahneman for the research behind Blink, Epstein for the argument with Outliers. Mary Roach, Susan Cain, Adam Grant and Rutger Bregman also turn research into stories.

Does Malcolm Gladwell have a new book?

Yes. The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic was published by Little, Brown on 29 September 2026. It asks why gun violence in the United States has been so hard to solve, and grew out of his Revisionist History episodes.

Which Malcolm Gladwell book should I read first?

Outliers (2008) is the most widely read and the easiest way in. The Tipping Point (2000) is the book that made his name; he revisited its idea in Revenge of the Tipping Point (2024).

What should I read after Outliers?

K. Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool’s Peak (2016), which explains the deliberate-practice research behind the 10,000-hour rule, and David Epstein’s Range (2019), which makes the case for specialising late.

Is the 10,000-hour rule true?

Not as a rule. The figure came from K. Anders Ericsson’s research on expert performance, and Ericsson disputed Gladwell’s simplification: in his work what mattered was deliberate practice, not a fixed number of hours.

Is Malcolm Gladwell Canadian?

He was born in Fareham, England, in 1963 and grew up in Elmira, Ontario, from the age of six; he is usually described as British-Canadian.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

Authors Like Malcolm Gladwell

10 authors like Malcolm Gladwell

Robert Cialdini

Daniel Kahneman

Michael Lewis

Mary Roach

Susan Cain

Adam Grant

David Epstein

K. Anders Ericsson

Rutger Bregman

Jon Ronson

Where to start if you loved Malcolm Gladwell

Frequently asked questions about authors like Malcolm Gladwell

Who writes like Malcolm Gladwell?

Does Malcolm Gladwell have a new book?

Which Malcolm Gladwell book should I read first?

What should I read after Outliers?

Is the 10,000-hour rule true?

Is Malcolm Gladwell Canadian?

Lisanne Swart

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