Outliers: The Story of Success

A disjointed narrative designed to obscure the fact that Gladwell has nothing truly insightful to say. Highly successful people possess above average intellect, work their butts off and (gasp, are you ready for this?) are almost always beneficiaries of some good fortune that makes all the difference. All sorts of interesting questions about success that could have been explored and this is as deep as it gets. Don't waste your time or money.

I again find Gladwell to be a mixed bag. Much of what he says is True But Useless: it can't be acted upon, except perhaps to become more sympathetic to those that don't succeed through no fault of their own. And he has a pretty high threshold for what the subtitle describes as "success": I can still feel pretty successful without having achieved as much as the Beatles, Bill Joy, or Bill Gates. It's an engaging read, but I won't urge you to go out and get it.

Once you read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, you will never think of your life in the same way. This book is a very interesting read, as Gladwell explores why many people in fame and power came to be. His approach does not follow the traditional model of the hardest worker always wins. Gladwell states that while hard work is essential to earning ones way to fame (stated in the “10,000 hour rule” chapter), it is the opportunity to be able to work hard is what makes the greatest stand out. Gladwell then states some examples of this rare cases, or outliers (The Beatles, Bill Gates). While this is a very interesting interpretation of success, it becomes a repetitive theme in the book. Gladwell merely gives different real life stories of successful people and explains how they were lucky to get the opportunity to practice for 10,000 hours. While reading this book, I began to feel like Gladwell was discrediting all people that have success. It also encourages people not to pursue their goals, because one could feel like if they are not blessed with an extraordinary opportunity, they will never amount to anything. Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.