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Outliers: The Story of Success | 
 enlarge | Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Category: Book
List Price: $27.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 2
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0316017922
Dewey Decimal Number: 302
EAN: 9780316017923
ASIN: 0316017922
Publication Date: November 18, 2008 (New: This Week)
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best of the Month, November 2008: Now that he's gotten us talking about the viral life of ideas and the power of gut reactions, Malcolm Gladwell poses a more provocative question in Outliers: why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential? Challenging our cherished belief of the "self-made man," he makes the democratic assertion that superstars don't arise out of nowhere, propelled by genius and talent: "they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot." Examining the lives of outliers from Mozart to Bill Gates, he builds a convincing case for how successful people rise on a tide of advantages, "some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky."
Outliers can be enjoyed for its bits of trivia, like why most pro hockey players were born in January, how many hours of practice it takes to master a skill, why the descendents of Jewish immigrant garment workers became the most powerful lawyers in New York, how a pilots' culture impacts their crash record, how a centuries-old culture of rice farming helps Asian kids master math. But there's more to it than that. Throughout all of these examples--and in more that delve into the social benefits of lighter skin color, and the reasons for school achievement gaps--Gladwell invites conversations about the complex ways privilege manifests in our culture. He leaves us pondering the gifts of our own history, and how the world could benefit if more of our kids were granted the opportunities to fulfill their remarkable potential. --Mari Malcolm
Product Description
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 A brilliant book. Gladwell does it again! November 19, 2008
Bad points: (None)
Good points (There are so many that I will have to leave off a few for the sake of brevity) :
1. The writing style here is excellent. There are no wasted words and long digressions, and the whole book can be read over the course of an afternoon or two. The clear and cogent arguments seemed to leap off the pages.
2. The discussion of Jewish clothing merchants finally included a very subtle point that most people have not appreciated. If you have someone who starts off as a merchant, it is much easier for them to make the transition to professional than it is if you are starting off as a factory worker. It seems that the preponderance of Jews in law is some accident of history (since other groups with a comparable IQs didn't end up so heavily represented in law).
3. His chapter on Asian math ability was also something very good. I do know that his observations on the monosyllabic Chinese language were correct. It just never occurred to me that the brevity of the language was a major factor in explaining why the average Asian is better at math than most. His observation on the math skills being dependent on the TYPE of agriculture cultivated was very subtle and plausible.
4. One can imagine a plane crash happening because of miscommunication between pilots happening in exactly the way that he described it. Verbal subterfuge is a very common theme in talking with people in Asia. This topic alone could have taken up another two chapters, but Gladwell gave us a just-sufficient dose and then left it to us to read some of the bibliographical materials.
5. There has always been a question as to whether IQ is a something that has a threshhold value (i.e., if you fall below a certain point is there something that you just can NEVER do) or is it something that has a linear response (i.e., if you have an IQ of a lower level that it will just take you more time to do the same thing that it would take a higher IQ person to do?). He exposed us to how IQ behaves across the whole spectrum.
6. The author was as nice as he could possibly be when he demonstrated the existence of the high IQ fool (i.e., Chris Langan). He quoted some of the nonsense that this man said but was nice enough to leave it to the reader to fill in the blanks.
7. Gladwell managed to return to the theme of physical environment (weather/ mountains/ farming conditions) as an explanation of many things many times. The observations were given at various points throughout the text (and not as one never-ending topic) and this made it much more interesting.
8. Many social sciences don't go about the business of explaining things that ACTUALLY EXIST. This is one book that bucks that trend and does it with great deftness.
Deconstructing Greatness November 19, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
In this the third of his "how come things are the way they are" books, Malcolm Gladwell takes apart success, drilling down to the determinants of extraordinary achievement.
Is it nature, nurture, neither, or both that leads to human achievement outside the bounds of what might normally be expected? Gladwell embarks on a scavenger hunt for patterns beneath the surface of success in this thoroughly engaging quest for answers to this perennially problematic question.
It's an interesting and engrossing read, touching on a wide cross section of outstanding endeavor - Mozart, Bill Gates, the Beatles, Robert Oppenheimer, the list goes on and on.
And sure enough, Gladwell uncovers systems and process underpinnings that certainly seem to contribute to the achievements surveyed in the book.
We learn for instance of the Matthew Effect, manifested in the fact that it is those who are initially successful, that are most likely to be given the kinds of opportunities that lead to further success. An interesting example of this is found in the number of hockey players born in the early months of the year. Logically they would be more developmentally advanced than their peers born later in the year in a system in which evaluation takes place within sets of a given age group. As a result the older group in the given class is favored and voila - produces a preponderance of what otherwise might appear to be hard to make sense of hockey talent.
Other factors contributing to success include the "ten-thousand-hour rule" (successful people practice a lot), various factors relating to context (being in the right place at the right time), and so on.
While all this is interesting enough, ultimately it reinforces a sense that human greatness eludes this kind of analysis. Sure there are patterns in the stories that Gladwell chooses to tell. But if this is so, he's not really dealing with "outliers", if these are indeed observations outside of the sampling or normal outcomes that one might expect a system to produce.
I wish the author would have delved into examples of greatness outside these boundaries - true "black swans" whose achievement is totally unexpected, and could never be predicted. Einstein is an example of such a phenomenon. Unfortunately, he gets only a single passing mention.
This having been said, I recommend the book. It's entertaining and certainly gets the reader thinking about what sets high achievers apart.
Now, turning to Gladwell himself, it seems he's a Canadian. Can we therefore safely assume that he played hockey in his youth?
OK - so what I want to know is when's his birthday...
 We get it Malcolm! Write trivial books, you have success! November 19, 2008
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
Enough already with these books. It's common sense. Nothing deep here. Mr. Gladwell's books are all the same - mindless dribble for those just this side of reality tv. Kudos for proving your point though!
Another winner for Gladwell. November 19, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Once again Gladwell gets beneath the hood of life and finds out how the engine runs. In Outliers he takes on diverse subjects, looking at them in ways that haven't been elucidated before (except by a few). He is a collector of these stories, not the original investigator, but he is more interesting for that reason. He synthesizes the knowledge, assembling disparate accounts into a coherent and surprising truth. He is also a wonderful story-teller. He makes the stories interesting and easy to read. I inhaled this entire book in one day.
In this volume I learned about the importance of your birthdate in sports and academic achievement, the need for 10,000 hours practice, and the advantages of emotional intelligence. Gladwell concludes that without certain advantages, few people excel. This is not a welcome conclusion, but it is an important one.
Each of these stories can stand alone, as a fascinating vignette, an instructive lesson. The implications for our world are many. An intelligent motivated individual could read this book and take any number of these ideas make it into a great opportunity to improve the world and themselves. Even more importantly, you can take the book as a whole and adopt a new way of looking at the world. This is not a how-to manual, or a self help book. Some have criticized his work because it does not give you a blueprint for success. Those criticisms miss the point. This knowledge is powerful all by itself.
I once had the good fortune to hear Gladwell speak. He did not cut an impressive figure, reminding me more of Sideshow Bob than Albert Einstein. When he began to speak, however, he wiped away all of my skepticism. Malcolm Gladwell is a genuine phenomenon. Read his book!
An interesting look at what gets success November 18, 2008
18 out of 27 found this review helpful
In this wide-ranging third installment of Malcolm Gladwell's exploration of how people and social phenomena work, the New Yorker journalist takes a close look at what constitutes high levels of success. That is, what makes people at the top of their respective fields get there? As we've come to expect from Gladwell's previous books, the answer to the question is a bit complicated.
He says that upbringing, culture and even random luck have something to with success, but there is another important quality that anyone can control. Two chapters are dedicated to the "revelation" that IQ is only a baseline quality and success has little to nothing to do with having a high IQ or a low IQ. Rather, success is substantially a product of cultivating a high degree of what Robert Sternberg calls "practical intelligence" or what most refer to as "emotional intelligence."
Gladwell uses the example of Nobel laureates coming from unknown schools as often as ivy league schools. At this level of mastery IQ is no longer a factor. Success has little to do with where you were educated and everything to do with your level of practical/emotional intelligence and willingness to put in the 10,000 hours of practice required to reach mastery of your field.
All in all, it's an interesting read that isn't too heady and goes by pretty quickly, as the interesting anecdotes are what you would expect from Gladwell.
Another book on the topic that I strongly recommend because it has been really helpful to me in actually applying what Gladwell teaches in my own life (for my own success!) is The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book.
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