Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

These were history's gifts to my family--and if the resources of that grocer, the fruits of those riots, the possibilities of that culture, and the privileges of that skin tone had been extended to others, how many more would now life a lofe of fulfillment, in a beautiful house high on a hill?

This is the first book I've ever read by Gladwell, although I'm pretty sure he's something of a big deal in the literary scene these days. I bet Oprah is a fan. Outliers started out a little dangerous for my tastes. The impression I got from the first chapter was that people are successful because they're lucky and their circumstances facilitate their rise to the top. Now me, I'm a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps type of guy. I was pretty irritated by the first couple of pages. Subsequent chapters make it clear that Gladwell actually thinks (and statistics show) that success comes from those who are lucky enough to find themselves in a situation where great success is possible and then work harder than everybody else in that same fortunate circumstance.

My only real complaint about Outliers is that it didn't seem to have any clear direction. I get that Gladwell is trying to explain all these statistical outliers, but he kinda just bounces all over the place and only ties the different sections together very loosely.

I don't have too much to say about Outliers besides that I think its interesting enough, well-written enough, and short enough that there really isn't any excuse not to read it. Oh, I'll say that Gladwell's explanation for why Asians are so much better at math than me (and my like) was very cool. And surprisingly not racist. Check it out.

Highlights: Explaining how Koreans are really good at math but really bad at not crashing airplanes
Lowlights: Making me feel like I could never play professional hockey not matter how hard I tried.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

ok, so it's been a month or so since i read this book, so this review is going to be pretty weak, but i'll do my best anyway.

i had read gladwell's other books (the tipping point and blink) and loved them and this was no different. they are all simply fascinating. i sometimes wonder whether i should have been a psych major or minor or something because the field really intrigues me. but anyway, some of my favorite parts of the book were the sections about education and about southern chivalry. i found it very interesting that, according to gladwell, the biggest difference between poorer and wealthier schools was the amount of information the kids retained over the summer. i realized that the summer reading programs that i had growing up played a big part in my current love for reading and tried to convey that to chris, telling him that he should make his students have a summer reading program, but he just laughed at me...

i also thought the chapter on backwoods family feuds in rural areas of southern states and the manifestations in our city slicker lives was very interesting. i can't really remember much about it, though, so i guess y'all will just have to go read it for yourselves. you can skip the last chapter, though, it's kinda pointless.

one of the major premises of the book is that the most successful people (like rockefeller and bill gates) were not only very talented, but more importantly in the right place at the right time. at first this might seem a little depressing, because most of us probably won't be in that perfect confluence of events that leads to superstardom. on the other hand, and the way i tend to look at it, this theory kind of gives the rest of us an excuse. you can still be very successful without being ridiculous like some of the people in this book, but if you ascribe to this theory you have an excuse if you're not ridiculous. so next time someone says, "wow, so and so invented the flying car/perfect popcorn cooking microwave by the time he/she was 24. what the hell had you accomplished at 24?" just be like, "shit, if i had lived next to the flooberdom mine when i was 20 then i might have invented flying cars, too..." (and if you're wondering, the answer is yes, i do believe the key to flying cars is a yet undiscovered substance called flooberdom).

but yeah, i give this book an 8 out of 10. very quick read, very interesting

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

"For unto everyone that hath shall be givine, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." - Matthew 25:29

And thus starts Chapter One of Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, the thesis of which debunks that most democratic of myths, the idea of the self-made man, and instead proposes the idea that even in America, privilege and chance count far more than talent in the making of geniuses, professional athletes, and star businessmen. Gladwell examines this idea from two different angles in the two parts of his book.

Part I deals with Gladwell's assertion that it is not the most brilliant or talented people that ultimately succeed; it is those who have been given the most opportunities to do so. He illustrates this fact by examining cases like why most professional hockey players in Canada are born in January (a simple collusion of the junior leagues' cutoff date and the rate at which young boys grow); why some geniuses succeed but not others (contrasting the very different lives of Robert Oppenheimer and an unfortunate but brilliant man named Chris Langan); and why it is a boon to be a Jewish lawyer born in 1935.

In Part II, Gladwell argues that cultural differences are not only very real, they must be taken into account in order to succeed. He looks at the success of the KIPP charter school program, which places poor urban children in school 9 hours per day, 6 days a week, 11 months of the year in an attempt to close the achievement gap; he studies why the airlines of certain countries have had to enforce communication training between captains and first officers to overcome cultural boundaries that threaten aviation safety.

In the end, Gladwell argues that in a truly democratic society, people would not be left to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, allowing those given the most to rise to the top. It would be recognized that those who do succeed do so not only on their own talents but on the enormous opportunities bestowed upon them by society, and there would be sufficient checks in place to ensure that everyone was given those same opportunities.

I've read Malcolm Gladwell's two other books, Blink and The Tipping Point, and I believe that his thesis comes through most clearly in this latest volume. I've found some of his other works difficult to follow, as he tends to jump from example to example without bringing each back to his main argument. In all of his books, Gladwell's talent lies in telling a story. He provides a wealth of interesting and entertaining examples and tries to loosely tie each of them to an overarching thesis. In Outliers, he succeeds.

Gladwell's examples of hockey players, geniuses, Bill Gates, Korean Air, Appalachian feuds, KIPP's success, Jewish attorneys, and his own family's history may not seem to have much in common besides all being interesting stories in their own rights. That Gladwell can weave between them and tie each back to his master argument, that it is not talent but opportunity that determines success, is a testament to his growth as a writer since The Tipping Point.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys books in the same vein as Steven Levitt's Freakonomics (read) or Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan (on my list). It is highly entertaining and interesting, and poses some great food for thought for those of us who have enjoyed many of the opportunities Gladwell describes.