Chicken Cooking and Product Pitching

The first of many "stories," as Gladwell calls them, introduces readers to a man named Ron Popeil and his "conquest of the American kitchen." Ron Popeil is the son of S.J. Popeil, who served as an intern and nephew to the late Nathan Morris, a pitchman with his own small company. S.J., inspired by his uncle, went on to form the Popeil Brothers company who brought mid 60's America a wide array of kitchen gadgets including the Chop-O-Matic and the Veg-O-Matic. Gladwell goes on to tell the story of Ron and his less than ideal childhood that lead up to his ground breaking career as a pitchman for his father's company. Gladwell's unique way of making the character of the story (in this case Ron) seem like the author himself provided a means of emphasis on one of Ron's most important breakthroughs in his pitching career: TV allowed you to to do more effectively than the best pitchman did in live demonstrations; it allowed the pitchman to make the product the star. Gladwell's portrayal of a long standing friendship with Popeil  makes the reader feel even more emotionally involved when Ron, while pitching his very own rotisserie chicken in-home oven, hit over 1 million dollars in sales in just the first hour of his infomercial. Never did I think going into this book would I be inspired by a 1 AM infomercial as well as an in-home rotisserie chicken oven invented by a man named Ron. That alone shows Gladwell's talent for taking the ordinary and transforming it into a symbol of revolutionary thinking.