What do Simon Winchester’s “The man who loved China” and Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” have in common? Francesca Bray. She wrote the one volume of Joseph Needham’s “Science and civilisation in China” about agriculture (apparently alone) and as such she received mention in “The man who loved China”. So it makes sense that Malcolm Gladwell refers to her work when citing rice agriculture in China. I wonder if the reference is from the same volume of “Science and civilisation in China”, but I’m not given to know, since oddly enough, “Outliers” does not have a bibliography (at least not my edition).
Anyway, I was amused at finding this little connection between two unrelated books that I just happened to read in sequence. Finding (unlikely) patterns in chaos is fun.