Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw was one of my Christmas presents. It's a collection of his essays from The New Yorker, dating back some years. I had already read some of them in the magazine, and I'd assumed this would be a pleasant enough, undemanding read. It is that – in fact ideal for picking up in the airport bookstore as the articles are the perfect length for the quality of concentration one has on a journey – but it's more too.

Part of the additional value comes from the visibility the format gives to his technique as a writer. Other writers can only admire his clarity and envy his popularity, and there are some clues here. The importance of the particular story to illustrate the general point, the weaving of narrative and analysis through a piece, the way he uses characters to convey messages, and his reliance on the paradoxical or surprising turn.

Equally striking when seeing Gladwell's preoccupations in essay after essay is the realization that what interests him is really epistemology. How do we know anything? How do we pick out the truth from the mass of contradictory or uncertain evidence? I particularly enjoyed the articles closest to this core interest, such as one on why we shouldn't expect intelligence agencies to be able to predict attacks even if it seems obvious afterwards that they could have 'joined the dots'. Or why it's futile to blame anyone for a disaster such as the Challenger shuttle, because in complex modern institutions and systems there will sometimes be unfortunate coincidences and accidents. (Indeed, this seems to be precisely the motive for the new Atul Gawande book, the Checklist Manifesto, which I haven't yet read.)

So once again a Gladwell book overcame my initial consumer resistance to all the hype. I'm looking forward to his next one.