If you like to read to broaden your horizons, to challenge your way of thinking, to stimulate new ideas, and if you do not like overly pretentious, academic books that are bogged down in techno-speak and footnotes, then you will love this book. No, the writer is not presenting original research but Malcolm Gladwell is a genious at taking the research of others and putting it together in new ways that are thought provoking and mind-changing. I read this book very quickly but the ideas presented here about success and how it is attained will stay with me for a long time. It has changed how I look at myself and others. It is a wonderful book for discussion and could not be more timely as a we start a new administration committed to change.

For too long, Americans have been divided into the "Personal Responsibility vs. Societal Responsibility" camps. We have become a divided nation that has been at loggerheads and has accomplished little. Our position in the world has deteriorated as a result. This book offers a "via media". There may be other solutions but it is a wonderful start to a community conversation that needs desperately to take place.

Whether you ultimately agree or disagree with Mr. Gladwell's conclusions, you need to read this book!

Gladwell's The Tipping Point was more politics than science. Blink was a bunch of pseudo-scientific nonsense supported by nothing but anecdotes, bad reasoning and cherry-picked facts, the latter of which did not at all mesh with the actual research on the topic Gladwell was presenting himself as an expert on. When he gave a keynote address to the Society for Judgment and Decision Making (people who actually scientifically study what that book was about), Gladwell was practically laughed out of the room. When it came to Q&A time all of Gladwell's arguments fell apart--fast. Sadly, Outliers is no better. Gladwell, as usual, has a preconceived political viewpoint and then, ad hoc, attempts to cherry pick anecdotes in order to support his bias. Real research is not supposed to work that way. To make matters worse, after Gladwell makes the age-old observation that there will always be outliers of success (duhhhhhhhhhh), or, as Thomas Jefferson said, in any free society a natural aristocracy of talent, intellect and hard workers will always emerge, Gladwell then steps into yet another fallacy. He tries to make the huge non sequitur that, after making some cherry-picked observations regarding outliers of success, that the government can somehow engineer things to make the outliers the average. He ignores a century of evidence wherein multiple countries tried to do just that through endless social planning misadventures. The result was ALWAYS the same--fewer outliers than there were before, pulling everyone down to the mean. It's as Churchill said (paraphrasing): with capitalism there are outliers, and some people are miserable. With socialism everyone is made equally miserable. More fallacious hogwash from charlatan Gladwell.

According to Nietzsche, Kant writes what the common man believes in a language that the common man cannot understand. Malcolm Gladwell, it must be said, vigorously reaffirms what the common man believes in a language that the common man CAN understand, thus flattering the common man and "making him happy." "To be made happy": a Gladwellism for "to be satisfied with a consumer item, such as a book by Malcolm Gladwell."

In OUTLIERS (2008), Gladwell argues, in essence: "It is better to be mediocre than it is to be brilliant!" Perhaps that is too blunt of a truncation, but the book seems to welcome such simplicity.

We are introduced to Chris Langen, "the public face of genius in American life" [70], who nonetheless works in construction and "despairs of ever getting published in a scholarly journal" [95]. Langen fails because he was raised in abject squalor, and his mother "missed a deadline for his financial aid" [98]. By contrast, Robert Oppenheimer, a "success" for his complicity in the atomization of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was "raised in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Manhattan" [108]. Other actors on the community-theater proscenium include Marita, a twelve year old from an impoverished family who gives up her evenings, weekends, and friends to slave away in one of New York City's most rigorous and competitive middle schools. She will succeed, Gladwell suggests, because she "works hard" and is given a "chance." Indeed, Bill Gates was a "success" because he was given unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal at the age of thirteen. The Beatles were a "success" because they forced themselves to perform eight-hour concerts in Hamburg between 1960 and 1962. Along the way, the reader is pepper-sprayed with anecdotes about Korean aviation and Kentuckian aggression that have no apparent relevance to the thesis of the book, except to "demonstrate" that one's "cultural legacy" sometimes has to be jettisoned in order for one to become "successful."

Gladwell is arguing, in nuce, that success--euphemistic for "financial prosperity"--corresponds not to one's intelligence, but rather to opportunity and social savoir-faire. The thesis isn't so much false as it is banal. Of course, one must have social skills and opportunity to be "successful." And yet I would contend, pace Gladwell, that even social skills and opportunity are not enough, by themselves, for an individual to succeed financially. Life never brooks such easy recipes (or follows such "predictable courses" [267], to use Gladwell's language).

What, precisely, does Gladwell mean by "intelligence"? Quite ironically, the author hypostatizes the Intelligence Quotient Test and thus subscribes to the false supposition that intelligence can be quantified and measured. If you receive 180 on the Intelligence Quotient Test, in other words, then you are a super-genius. Now, I did, in fact, score 180 on the I.Q. Test, but that, in itself, is no guarantor of my genius. Intelligence is an impalpable thing, and there is no necessary relationship whatsoever between one's intelligence and the I.Q. examination, just as, following Gladwell, there is no necessary relationship between one's I.Q. score and "success."

Moreover, Gladwell ignores the temporal differences that separate his stories. Oppenheimer lived in an America that was less intimidated by, and envious of, intelligence than the America of the twenty-first century. I differ from Gladwell, and my counter-thesis is the following: Even if Langen possessed superior social skills, it is very likely that he still would have failed in life.

Why? Because the culture has become a home for Swiftian Lilliputians, ever-ready to manacle down any Gulliver who comes their way. Yes, Gladwell is correct in suggesting that geniuses almost always fail and the mediocre almost always triumph, but he completely misses the reasons. You cannot possibly succeed if you are a genius unless you camouflage, to a certain extent, your intelligence. We are living a culture that, instead of lionizing intelligence, disdains it. Those who possess a higher intellect than the multitude are looked upon with acrimony and mistrust. Such is the "leveling-off" or equalization of all distinction to which polymaths and geniuses, such as myself, have long since grown accustomed.

Similarly, there is the impulse in this book to anathematize genius, as if genius were some kind of cancerous polyp that should be excised. It is not difficult to detect a certain defensiveness in Gladwell's anti-intellectualist posturing, not merely as if the myth that genius equals success needed to be debunked, but as if genius, in itself, were something intrinsically negative, threatening--damaging, even. Gladwell, non-genius, is content to attack genius in OUTLIERS with the same vehemence with which he attacked critical thinking in BLINK. And for exactly the same affective reason: Gladwell is as intimidated by genius as he is cowed by critical thought, for which he substitutes anecdotes lifted, quite uncritically, from single sources: books by John Ed Pierce, Richard E. Niebett and Dov Cohen, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin...

Gladwell's most ardent admirers --- non-brilliant readers who want reassurance that their non-brilliance is a formula for success --- sigh plaintively and bleat. And the mediocre shall inherit the Earth.

Dr. Joseph Suglia, The Greatest Author in the World

Read it if you want a nice read about talent and how practice makes perfect, but don't buy it if you want to learn anything that you can apply or want to be "surprised".

The book is, just like Blink and The Tipping Point, entertaining and easy to read and not very applicable. The main difference I think is that the other two gave me more of an Aha!-experience and described phenomena that were unknown to me.

There are, I think, two strands of argument in Outliers, a strong and weak version of the thesis. The strong version of this book's thesis is that outliers per se do not exist. Look below the surface of prominent individuals (Bill Gates, Robert J. Oppenheimer, and numerous others covered in this book) and one invariably finds a network of people that were instrumental in their success. The specific stories differ, but the underlying finding is the same. Conversely, when Gladwell examines those apparently gifted individuals who fail to satisfy expectations -- those that don't quite capitalize on their talents-- he finds that what they really lacked was a network of support. The weaker version of the book's thesis is that outliers do "out perform," but what allows the aspiring outlier to reach his or her potential is the right mix of social skills needed to attract support from others and even the good fortune of having a network of support within their grasp. Rejected by Gladwell is the image of the self-made man. There are any number of ways to challenge either version of Gladwell's thesis. What's more important is to read this book and to think about its arguments. This is what Gladwell does best. Whether it's tipping points or outliers, Gladwell is one of those unique voices (but by his own admission, not a solitary "outlier") that can force us to think meaningfully about significant forces in everyday life we might otherwise experience without so much as a second thought.

Gladwell's thesis in this book is, essentially, that success in life is largely the result of one's circumstances and surroundings (i.e., "luck"), not of good old-fashioned pluck, determination, and grit. Initially, his thesis is not even supported by many of the examples he gives, as no doubt the people he writes about had all three of these in spades. Sure, Bill Gates did have a unique opportunity in high school in that he was given rare access to a computer when such was virtually unheard of for a high school student. But I'm sure that in Bill Gates' high school class, there were plenty of other students given the same opportunity who decided they'd rather go to keg parties than become computing phenoms. Yet Gladwell gives that aspect of their achievements short shrift. Why? Because it doesn't fit his thesis. It is obvious that Gladwell started with his thesis and then researched for examples which he could mold around it, instead of starting with a genuine search for the "secret of success."

And not only that, Gladwell draws very broad conclusions about the secrets of success from relatively few examples which he was apparently able to dig up to support his world view. I'm sure that for every successful person whom Gladwell wrote about in the book, there is another successful person who had no discernible benefit of environment or circumstance in achieving success.

Furthermore, some of the examples he gives are supported with nothing but anecdotal evidence. For example, he says that one of the reasons why so many children of Jewish garment workers were able to become successful litigation and hostile takeover lawyers on Wall Street was because when they graduated law school, the staid, established firms wouldn't hire Jews, and they didn't think it "gentlemanly" to do litigation and hostile takeover work. So, the Jewish lawyers, Gladwell tells us, formed their own firms and became experts at the kind of law that the staid firms would not practice. And eventually, so Gladwell says, that kind of law became "in vogue" and then the Jewish lawyers were in very high demand. A very intriguing story, no doubt, but it's not valid to draw such sweeping conclusions based on the experience of one or two people.

Additionally, I'm troubled by the apparent fact that Gladwell defines "success" in life as "becoming rich and famous." Yeah, if you're talking about becoming a household name or the very elite of the elite of a particular area of endeavor, it certainly helps to have a lucky break or two somewhere along the way, and Gladwell's thesis may have more validity when you set the bar of "success" so high. But certainly, it's quite possible to have a fulfilled professional and social life with nothing but sheer determination and hard work, sans "good fortune." The danger of the book is that some readers will interpret the message as, "I'm not one of the lucky few, so why try"?

And finally, don't waste your time on this book if you're looking for any advice on how to succeed. The only "takeaway" I could find from the book is that, essentially, success is largely out of your hands, and there's really nothing you can do about it. Fortunately, I don't believe that, and you shouldn't, either.

It was a worthwhile read despite the fact that is it essentially a collage of stories with somewhat of a common thread. The section on pilot error really openend my eyes to what happens in the cockpit of commercial airplanes. He writes in a style that entertains and informs, however it is far from a fully researched and logically presented subject. In school terms it would the an incomplete or fail. Not a pass grade. However, for TV attention span America it will do the trick.

It is not a book in the sense that all of the chapters pertain to related topics. For instance the chapter on pilot error had nothing to do with outliers or success. (but it was very interesting)

Why do I think he has his thesis backwards? He posits that success depends more on the opportunity available to you than the effort you put into it. It is true that if you are not presented with opportunities it will be hard to succeed. However, I would like to point out that many people are exposed to the same opportunities and they will obtain not only a different degree of success but also complete failure. This is strictly due to how much effort and focus went into achieving success. That is the formula. Not the other way around as he states in this book.

Provided with the same opportunities one person will succeed and the other will fail. The ingedients he calls responsible for success are mere contributing factors. The real reason for success is the effort put into the task.

Gladwell says no one succeeds by themselves. This is true. However, only YOU are responsible for your success. If YOU had chosen to sit on the couch all day YOU would fail. So while YOU could have the benefit of opportunities they are not responsible for your success. Only YOU yourself and the work YOU put in it make the real difference. He tried to turn this around in his book and I disagree with it.

I am afraid this book and its attitude could lead people to say that they were not given the opportunity and therefore they did not make it, versus them making what they could with their utmost best effort.

This was a quick, enjoyable read that opens your mind to what lies beneath success.

This book is excellent. Entertaining and insightful. I couldn't put it down and finished it in two days.

It got here in just a couple of days and in
new condition. i could not have asked for any
better service. Thank you...

I enjoyed the first half of this book more than the second half. Much of the book covers material that is pertinent to parents raising young children.

This book was my favorite Christmas present!

Mr. Gladwell has prompted me to think about my own unique opportunities and how diligently I pursue them. The argument for year-round schooling in Chapter 9 is excellent.

In my opinion, Gladwell has done a magnificent job with this book, and the ideas presented are enormously important for anyone interested in success in any field of endeavor.

His basic thesis is as follows:

1. Inborn ability matters relatively little in many fields. In some fields like science it matters more, but only in the sense that one needs a minimum threshold of ability (eg, IQ of at least 120); above that threshold, extra ability doesn't matter much.

2. In pretty much all fields, focused hard work is necessary to develop expertise, and generally about 10,000 hours need to be invested to reach the expert level. But being an expert isn't the same as achieving the standout success of an "outlier" (eg, Bill Gates, Will Smith, or Barack Obama).

3. Luck plays a large role in success. Bad luck can dramatically inhibit success, and good luck fosters success. Exceptionally good luck (eg, a long series of lucky circumstances) is needed to achieve success at the outlier level. Luck clearly interacts with the first two factors noted above -- inborn ability involves rolling the genetic dice, and having the opportunity to put in one's 10,000 hours also involves luck (eg, poor kids aren't likely to have access to computer centers, violin lessons, and professional coaches). Being immersed in a culture which fosters success in a particular field is also a matter of luck, along with being born at the "right" time within that culture.

The particular strength of Gladwell's book is that he's a great writer with outlier-level ability for storytelling. Some reviewers have criticized his book for lack of originality, but Gladwell deserves credit and success for bringing these important ideas to a large general audience in a gripping and compelling way. And he certainly doesn't claim that he came up with these ideas all by himself.

Some reviewers have also criticized Gladwell for not adequately grounding his ideas in published research and for thereby cherry-picking data and arguing with straw men. That's a somewhat odd criticism, since it contradicts the criticism of lack of originality. Moreover, there are several good books available which describe the research critics might be looking for, such as the following:

- Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin is an excellent book which overlaps considerably with Gladwell's book. The main difference is that Colvin puts greater emphasis on hard work ("deliberate practice") whereas Gladwell emphasizes luck more, so one could say that Colvin is more focused on expertise whereas Gladwell is more focused on going beyond expertise to the outlier level.

- Creativity in Science: Chance, Logic, Genius, and Zeitgeist by Dean Keith Simonton is another excellent book which focuses specifically on creativity (and success) within science. The book reads like a PhD thesis and is quite rigorous in its use of careful reasoning, empirical data, and quantitative analysis. In a sophisticated way, Simonton provides strong support for Gladwell's ideas, and he ultimately argues that chance (luck) is the dominant factor in scientific creativity and success, while also recognizing the supporting roles of genius (inborn ability), zeitgeist (culture), and logic (basic knowledge of one's scientific domain and its rules of inference, which comes from hard work, perhaps again involving roughly 10,000 hours invested in education and training). Simonton also emphasizes that a scientist's chance of coming up with important ideas is directly related to total output (eg, number of papers published), so that ties chance to continued hard work after already becoming an expert (eg, obtaining a PhD).

- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a fascinating and provocative book which, coming from a different angle, also argues for the role of unforseeable luck (positive "black swans") in producing outlier-level success, with negative black swans having the opposite effect.

In summary, I believe Gladwell has a done a great service in presenting very important ideas related to success in a user-friendly way, and I think the evidence (in his book and beyond) provides strong support for his ideas.

Very highly recommended -- indeed, a must read, especially for parents.

I was anticipating this book from the moment I realized that Malcolm was writing it. I thoroughly enjoyed Blink and the Tipping Point and have to say that I also thoroughly enjoyed Outliers. I think that anybody who is deeply interested in success will enjoy this book. I have heard of the theory that success is more luck than talent and have made my own observations of that phenomenon in my own life, but I have never read a book that focused so much on that phenomenon and cited so many counter-intuitive examples. It has made me a much stronger believer in the idea that success in many ways is outside of our control, or rather exposed another way of controlling success whether for ourselves and probably primarily in other people.

This book is not just about what makes the ultra-successful, well, ultra-suceessful. Gladwell also discusses why some of those who "should" be successful (ones with super high IQs, for example) do not succeed. The cumulative effects of socioeconomic advantage he described in the book is rather startling and worthy of further contemplation.

It seemed Gladwell was writing about many of my friends and family. Although I believe that here is an author that is above average in writing ability and thinking ability, he writes so you can get the point he is making and still makes it very enjoyable. I really loved this book.

I think this book has a lot of interesting facts and observations in it; however, it should be read with a bit of skepticism as many of the observations in the book could be misleading if read at face value.

Few would argue against the notion that to be successful, a person would have to be talented enough in an area of expertise to attain mastery, or that a lot of hours have to go into practice in any field.

What is surprising to learn from Malcolm Gladwell's book is the degree to which the events surrounding a talented person's beginnings play into his or her success or failure. By now, knowing the history or women and persons of color, we ought not be so surprised, but the cultural folktale of the "self made" individualist is hard to shake.

In the face of some legitimate criticism made elsewhere (does Mr. Gladwell "smooth the curve" a bit much?), this book is still very much worth reading. It makes the convincing case that success isn't what we think it is, and that there are specific, practical and achievable ways we might create opportunity for those with talent who aren't lucky to be born into a societal context that allows their hard work and ability to flourish, and not go wasted.

Along the way, the reader will absorb some very interesting facts.

Outliers was written by Malcolm Gladwell, whose first two books (The Tipping Point and Blink) were both number one on New York Times best sellers lists. Outliers is even better than his first two books.

The premise of the book is that there are often a lot of factors that affect one's ability to become a superstar in one's area of endeavor, whether it be sports, computers, or practicing law. While he doesn't discount the importance of individual effort, he provides compelling evidence that such extraneous factors as one's birthdate can make an incredible difference in one's level of success in life. I realize that his hypothesis may seem absurd at first blush, I think you will subscribe to his point of view after reading the book.

I was incredibly excited to get my hands on Outliers after reading both Blink and Tipping point in years past. I often call Gladwell my favorite author.

However, his 3rd book is a poor followup to his past best sellers. In short, this book seems forced. Like he wrote it only because his fans expected another book from him, not because he was passionate about the subject.

There are 2 sections of this book and they couldn't be more different. I struggled to transition from the first to the second which really took away from my enjoyment of reading.

I will say that the individual topics he writes about are interesting, but he just doesn't dive deep enough. That deep dive compared to other authors writing on similar subjects is what I came to love about Gladwell, and it is flat out missing from this book.

If you have read his past work you will probably be disappointed by this attempt. If you are new to Gladwell you will probably find some enjoyment in this book. It is more Freakonomics than it is Blink. That is, it's more amateur than it is professional.

gladwell's always an interesting read whom i never agree with completely and here slightly more and halfway. the premise that a certain minimum amount of time need be spent to master any particular activity i agree with wholeheartedly it's of particular relevance to slacker generation who seem happy to do everything in life superficially.
it also espouses alot of deterministic, evolutionary biological ideas and cultural stereotypes which the pc'ers may find at odds with their kumbya ideals and for which gladwell harbors not a shred of ill will against the groups he identifies and discusses.
this is especially important in the analysis of culture in air crash investigation. as a pilot, i discussed this with several friends who all fly at majors and they agree. when the lives of 120-150 passengers are in your hands, the idea of offending anyone "sensibilities" is rightly seen as trivial.
gladwell will always be "out there" and i'm glad to see any new thinking which might help get us out of the current severe mess we're in. youtube also has have the colbert report interview where he discusses this book.

Malcolm Gladwell is beginning to make a cottage industry out of apparent statistical anomalies, better explained thorough alternative forms of reasoning. As he did in both the "Tipping Point," and "Blink," Gladwell goes behind the data to probe its deeper meaning, and each time he comes up with counterintuitive explanations for individual success that are usually equal to or superior to the conventional explanations and understandings.

In this book, Gladwell demonstrates that it is not always individual aptitude, whether physical or intellectual, that is responsible for exceptional individual success. Often it is more mundane things and sometimes serendipitous advantages such as hockey players (or thoroughbred race horses) being admitted to competition based on their birthdays. Or, as was the case with Bill Gates having exclusive access to one of only a handful of university computers in existence at the time. Gates was able to rack up some 10,000 hours, while even the most brilliant and committed computer geeks had only a fraction of this amount.

In each of these (and many other) cases, the author demonstrates that it was not so much individual abilities, that was the deciding factor that led to success, but a slight advantage in access, or slight head starts, being a few months older, etc, that made a huge difference in the successful outcomes.

For those of us on the outside looking in, we have long known all along that a great deal of success depends on chance, circumstances, on even the slightest edge coming out of the starting gate, and who you know, rather than entirely on innate abilities or talent alone "Outliers," among other things confirms that one must come to the front prepared, armed, and then pray for luck.

Three stars

As with his previous books, Malcolm Gladwell brings together seemingly disparate issues and ideas to illuminate one undergirding notion. His argument this time out: that wild success has more to do with a person's surroundings growing up -- and the opportunities of time and place -- than any innate differences that may set that person apart from the rest of us.

At times, the points Gladwell makes are obvious. Too often all he's really doing is putting an intellectual spin on common sense. But then he makes bold leaps of logic that have absolutely no grounding. For example, he recounts the early days of the Beatles and how they performed together some 1200 times before ever arriving in the U.S. to launch the British invasion. This comes in a chapter about the "10,000 Hour Rule" and how practice of that magnitude translates into real "oulier" mastery of something like playing the violin or piano. He recounts a study showing that those who go on to be elite musicians begin practicing more and more compared to those who become, say, music teachers (10,000 hours vs. 4,000 hours). But then he begins conflating the terms, talking about amateurs and professionals ... and he seems not to realize one can go to any club in any city on any Friday night and see "professional" musicians you wouldn't label "outliers." The term certainly applies to the Beatles, and Gladwell asserts that much of their success is simply that they played a lot. Baloney. How many obscure professional musicians making $100 a night could he have found that have practiced and played for 10,000 hours or even double or triple that number ... and yet aren't anywhere near good enough to get a recording contract, much less record a masterpiece like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band? Too many to count. And so his explanation of the Beatles as "outliers" is laughable. He doesn't begin to understand what made them great. And, for that matter, he doesn't entertain the idea that those musicians willing to put in 10,000 hours of practice may be different from the outset, that they begin to see and understand their own gift and self-select themselves into the group willing to work harder and longer because they know it will pay off (as opposed to those who stop practicing so much because they can see their talents really lie elsewhere).

The problem of self-selection bias, in fact, is something Gladwell never addresses. It undermines the book's thesis at several junctures, as when he describes at length the success of the KIPP Academy. He never puts up alternative explanations and argues why his thesis should carry the day. But as with Gladwell's other books, I found the reading mostly entertaining (even if I argued with him from time to time). You do learn some interesting things. But you also encounter some kneeslappers. (Single dumbest sentence in the book: "If Canada had a second hockey league for those children born in the last half of the year, it would today have twice as many adult hockey stars." No, Malcolm, it would simply mean that the makeup of professional rosters would be more varied and better representative of the entire calendar ... and the overall talent level might be marginally higher. It's not as if the number of sports franchises and the size of rosters are determined by the pool of available athletes.)

Malcolm Gladwell synthesizes a wide variety of information and finds critical connections that challenge tons of everyday assumptions. It's the best kind of smart writing--simple and clear, so you almost don't notice how clever his observations are. It's a fun read that will change the way you think about life--can't get better than that!

A must read for all calculating people including: CEO's, C-Suites who want to create, inspire change for for themselves and for their business.

This book points out some great examples of how arbitrary cut of dates for various activities in sports and school skew normal distributions. Also, that in addition to hard work and brainpower that luck and happenstance have a lot to do with success. But, the author after giving such great examples then fails to pull it all together with a summary chapter.

It is well written and absorbing, in fact it is hard to put down. But then he lets you down at the end, by instead of a summary or conclusion, with a story about his family, which while showing another example, is just another example and not really a good way to end the book.

Up to the end of the book, I would have given it four stars, the ending was at best a two star effort - so, overall I gave it three.

I find that Mr. Gladwell writes another enticing book. I actually spent an entire day reading all the way through his third book, and to no surprise, it was one of the best reads of 2008. I actually suggested the book to one of my teachers, and she now plans to a project with next year's students in conjunction with the book. She even went about purchasing all three of Mr. Gladwell's books. It is easy to say that Mr. Gladwell will be, if he is not already, one of the best writers of our generation.

There are flaws in this book, to be sure. Still, there's so much good stuff in it that I've found myself recommending it to friends a half-dozen times in the short time since reading it.

To those who criticize on grounds of lack of originality, I would say, remember that Gladwell is a journalist, not a researcher. As a journalist, he tackles the task of reporting and popularizing the original research of others, and he's brilliant at it. He also makes connections between and among different ideas in a truly thought-provoking way.

A lot of recent pop-psychology and pop-economics books seem to draw on the same handful of studies to justify their arguments. One thing that I found fascinating about Outliers was that all the research he mentioned was stuff I hadn't personally come across before. If you keep up with these fields more than I do, then fewer of the ideas will be new to you, but I'm guessing 'most anyone will find something they never knew.

The central argument is actually a bit subtle and easily misunderstood. Gladwell observes that very successful individuals had much more opportunity than the population at large, and also worked harder. The easy mis-characterization is to say that he's taking the top folks down a peg, saying they're not really as talented as everyone believes. That's not his point at all; what he is saying is, there are other people out there who are also talented, and if they had greater access to opportunity then we'd have that many more great success stories in the world.

One difficulty with the argument, pointed out by others, is that it doesn't acknowledge its own limitations. Gladwell finds that the top software tycoons, corporate lawyers, and concert soloists all got more opportunity for practice than anyone else in their generation, which is in itself a really interesting observation. Where he overstretches is in saying that the same is true in every field. I don't know whether it is or not; but I suspect neither Gladwell nor anyone else does either, because the form of the proposition makes it impossible to answer definitively. No matter. Knowing that this pattern exists in many diverse fields, we can say it's at least common (if not universal), and that already is a great addition to the public discourse.

Two things I wonder about, after reading Outliers. First, what do we make of the polymaths and "Renaissance men" of history - da Vinci, Franklin, Newton, Diderot? There are only so many hours in the day; how could they have gotten more practice than their peers in so many different fields of endeavor? Second: this book tells us that in order to achieve greatness you have to have opportunity and you have to start young. As a matter of social policy, and even life advice, that's good. But for those who don't have ideal opportunity, or who are too old now to start young, it's telling us that we'll never do certain things. Even if that's true, I'm not sure I want to know. An awful lot has been accomplished through history by people who didn't know something couldn't be done; they'll now have one more reason to believe what they're trying is impossible, and a few of them may give up. I hope not.

Gladwell is a refreshing writer who in not too many words
is able to communicate ideas of great importance. I read
"Blink" and "The Tipping Point," and this book is every
bit as impressive. "Outliers" is a fresh perspective and more
realistic appraisal of what goes into the making of a successful person. As usual, the answer is multi-factorial. It suggests that if you want to be successful, you need to maintain a broad focus.

This book does an excellent job at breaking down how and why people have been able to become as enormously successful as they have. Gladwell explains the history in a very easy to read way that gets a very powerful point across,; to be really really successful it takes about 10 years or 10,000 hours first.

Actually the reason that students in Asian countries perform better at math is that the curriculum for 4th grade students in these countries include being taught in some fashion the math concept that the Identity Rule is the CORE MATH CONCEPT. This understanding is the only reason why they perform so well as a group in math. The argument that the asian languages create some intellectual advantage does not explain why other non-asian speaking countries also perform at high levels. Those educators that understand the importance of the Identity Rule refer to it as The Golden Rule of Math.

Any person with good math skills knows the Identity Rule. What appears to be less obvious to educators in the U.S. (based on U.S. student math performance) is that the IDENTITY RULE is the CORE MATH CONCEPT, and that it can be easily taught. These concepts can be understood by a student within an hour to an hour and a half, and that once understood (the Gestalt), the student can then easily understand all subsequent math instruction. An understanding of how to use the Identity Rule to manipulate fractions gives the student the ability to perform in math in the 98th percentiles, throughout elementary and high school just like students in asian countries.

Some additional thoughts on the argument that the asian languages create some intellectual advantage to perform better at math. This argument does not explain cause. It is merely an observation after the fact. The same is true about after the fact observations that differences in socio-economics, race, gender, intelligence, environment, single families, nutrition, homogeneous groups, etc., etc., explain why some perform better at math than others. These variables are not causal either. They make for good reading, but do not explain causality.

I argue that the obviously causal variable is BORDERS. Within some borders/(countries) the school systems include in the curriculum, teaching their students in some fashion, the CORE MATH CONCEPT, the Identity Rule, and how to use the Identity Rule to manipulate fractions. After the 4th grade, all math involves manipulating fractions. Students that are taught this CORE MATH CONCEPT easily, (emphasis on EASILY), learn all subsequent math instruction. The result then is that in spite of differences within BORDERS in socio-economics, family structure, gender, etc. their students as a group excel at math.

Thought this book could have been a magazine article in Psychology Today. Couple of interesting points that didn't require a $20.00 book to explain. I bought 3 books as gifts on recommendation of other readers. Unless you are interested in reading how Korean Air turned itself around, don't bother.

This book is mind expanding, fun and easy to read. I requiring my daughter to read it.

Your success is not your own, rather its determined by forces outside of your control, like when you were born, your ethnic background, and other factors. That is the central message of Outliers the third book by Malcolm Gladwell. While I found Gladwell's book well written and the stories interesting, I found the basic conclusion to be unhelpful and not particularly enlightening.

Gladwell's goal is to help us understand success by looking at people who have been very successful. This personal version of in search of excellence is a laudable goal; but his conclusions are not. Gladwell starts with the sweeping assumption that people who is good at what they do all have an equal shot at being successful. But those that are truly successful - the outliers have more to do with who your parents were, the time you were born in and your location than your own hard work or abilities.

Using a set of disjointed stories, Gladwell creates causality out of circumstances, for example equating the month you were born in with your ability to be an all star hockey player. Gladwell applies the same set of rule to explain why Asian's are better at math, Jewish people are better lawyers and southerners are more prone to violence. Now if you are as offended by these statements as I was, then you get my basic disagreement with this book. This is not the first time that Gladwell has used race, ethnicity and other factors to stir up controversy to generate attention for his work, it should be the last.

The problem with Gladwell's analysis and this book in general is that one can take another set of stories to prove a different set of factors were behind success. You see every set of data has outliers and I can choose my outliers by choosing my data set. Gladwell does this throughout the book, and the choices he makes feel more like a set of left over stories than a serious analysis of the factors that drive success.

According to Gladwell, you are powerless to overcome your circumstances and if you are luck enough you may become an outlier. However you are not powerless to choose the books you read and the time you spend reading them. I do not recommend this book. Its not about success. Its just about the authors personal hype.

Obviously this book is lightweight, but there is a discomfort and tight-lipped quality to the negative reviews that seem to me to be expressions more of the discomfort of engaging with the political nature of this book. Read Kakutani in the nytimes: "...Mr. Gladwell's emphasis on class and accidents of historical timing plays down the role of individual grit and talent to the point where he seems to be sketching a kind of theory of social predestination, determining who gets ahead and who does not..." This book (what Kautani rightly calls a "flimsy selection of colorful anecdotes and stories") should be read, I believe, not as a quality work of non-fiction, but as a document of the political shift in the USA away from the "conservative" reverence of individualism, "grit and talent" of the Regan/Bush years towards the Obama era in which global capitalism is self-destructing and the federal government and our democratic institutions (society) are called on to solve the crisis.

It's interesting that Gladwell who is a "Science" writer here mostly avoids the literature on genes and DNA that was the rage in the 1990s when there were several advances in genetics----instead he walks out into the dangerous waters of "nurture" (not "nature") and attempts to make his case that the structures of society, our positionality and class have huge consequences. But contra Kakutani, he does not discount "grit", as one of his theses is that there is a 10,000 hour rule: Practice something for 10,000 hours (20 hours a week for 10 years) and you will be an expert. Gladwell's point is *not* that hardwork, grit and determination are unimportant: it's that only *some* people have the access to the tools, resources, time and money to log those 10,000 hours.

Of course this will be controversial; it sounds "un-American" (Gladwell is Canadian, oui?) and to what extent our societies should create level playing fields essentially divides the left from the right. It doesn't help, though, that his argument for equality is sketched out so flippantly in this book. That's too bad; I thought this book was going to remind me of the awkward racial insensitivity of "Freakonomics" in which the authors "prove" that inner-city drug dealers in the end don't make that much money at all and are better off taking a minimum-wage job. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to find that Gladwell is an author who is deeply disturbed by the structures in place that prevent advancement and reinforce inequality.

Gladwell even deconstructs his own "bi-racial" antecedents and how their light skin and choice of light-skinned mates may have had something to do with the relative ease in which he grew up. This is quite timely during the age of Obama, where there many conversations over whether the future president is "black" or "African-American" or multi-racial or something new. The election of Obama is obviously an historic event that crystalizes and raises consciousness about the contradictions and struggles of race and class that have been raging in the USA for hundreds of years. This book fits into that context nicely.

It's also a sign of the times that this author who sells millions of copies of books decided to engage with these knotty issues and in the end side with those who want to ameliorate society. It's unfortunate, though, that because these issues are so complex the magazine style of writing and fluffy researching can't do the subject justice and the result is some embarrassing passages. Social inequality is the subject that some of the greatest thinkers such as Rousseau and Marx spent their careers on. If you are interested in this type of philosophy, the philosophy of actually changing the world, then this book is worth a skim to see how the zeitgeist is slowly shifting.

Spoiler alert! This book contains about a dozen "whoa, amazing" nuggets that could change your life, or at least tell you why you never changed your life, and I'm going to include all of them here just to have them listed somewhere convenient online for my benefit (and yours). But as any Gladwell fan knows, you don't read his writings just for the "holy cow" moments, you read them for the journey he takes you on in delivering those moments. This work provides several amazing journeys, even as they stray progressively farther from what seems to be the advertised purpose of the book: to illustrate how certain people become phenomenal successes. We learn early on the secret to being a great Canadian hockey player, assuming you are already spectacularly talented and work hard. But eventually we wind up learning not how to become a spectacularly successful airline pilot, but rather a spectacularly bad one. No bother, the book is providing entertaining information that can transform your professional life. So as for those dozen points, here goes, and you've already been warned:

1. There was a town in Pennsylvania called Roseto where people lived far longer and suffered far less from heart disease than people of similar genetic stock, eating similar diets, and living in similar nearby towns. The only explanation researchers could find was that Roseto had a uniquely strong sense of community: family and faith were both strong, and the wealthy did not flaunt their success.

2. In the Canadian "all star" junior hockey league - the surest ticket to the NHL - the majority of the players on the winning team were born in January, February, or March. The league was for players between 17 and 20 years old. Why the month anomaly? Because in Canada, elite hockey teams have try-outs at the age of 10, and the age cut-off is January 1. In essence, the oldest 10 year olds are far better at hockey than the youngest 10 year olds, so the youngest (those born in December) have no chance to make the select teams, which are the only ones with excellent coaching. The pattern continues all the way through high school. Similar birthday patterns are seen in places such as the Czech junior national soccer team. Makes you wonder about what "good for your age" means in academics too.

3. Many researchers believe in the "10,000 hour rule," namely that you need to spend about 10,000 hours on a skill - anything, including music, computer programming, business dealings in the expanding American West, or mergers and acquisitions - in order to become great at it. This is something Bill Gates and the Beatles have in common, thanks largely due to circumstances beyond their control.

4. At least 15 of the wealthiest 75 people in world history (in modern dollars) were born in the 9 years from 1831 to 1840. They were old enough to have learned how to profit in the rapidly industrializing United States (via 10,000 hours of experience) but not so old as to have already settled down and been inflexible with their life options or concepts of business. Similar birthdate "coincidences" are seen among the wealthiest tech entrepreneurs including Bill Gates, and among some of the most successful lawyers in New York.

5. In long-term studies, IQ is found to predict professional success - but only up to a score of about 120, past which additional points don't help. Nobel prize winners are equally likely to have IQs of 130 or 180. When minority students are admitted through affirmative action, their achievement scores may be lower, but as long as they are above the threshold, it does not affect the likelihood of professional success.

6. Anecdotes from the "world's smartest man," (according to IQ tests) Chris Langan, and the children of middle class families, suggest that "practical intelligence" about when, how, and with what words to speak up are a huge factor in success - specifically when speaking up can save you from losing a scholarship. Longitudinal studies of high-IQ children showed that a family's high socioeconomic background was more important to predicting success than very high IQ.

7. Many people put in their 10,000 hours in something like computer programming, but then never find themselves in the midst of a revolution where people with 10,000 hours of experience are desperately needed. Bill Gates did. The connections he formed as an early highly-sought programmer helped him rise and found Microsoft. Joe Flom, one of the most successful lawyers in New York, became a specialist in mergers and acquisitions before such transactions were considered "acceptable" business by mainstream lawyers. When the culture changed in the 1980s to accept such dealings, Joe Flom was the best of the best who had put in his 10,000 hours in a now-mainstream business. He became an historic success almost overnight.

8. When economically tough times hit, people stop having children for fear of being unable to provide for them. However, this may be the best time to have children, because there are few other children competing for things such as classroom attention, spots on school sports teams, professors' attention, and jobs upon high school or college graduation. There are also more children a decade behind them who will provide the demand for the goods and services the older children will provide.

9. The typical airline crash involves seven consecutive human errors, and crashes are significantly more likely to occur when the more-experienced captain is flying the plane, as opposed to the subordinate first officer. The likely reason is that the first officer is much less likely to speak up when he or she notices something wrong or a human error, and the captain is flying the plane. Flights in countries with a large "power distance index," which characterizes cultures where subordinates are generally afraid of expressing disagreement with superiors, are the most likely to crash. This included Korean air, which had the worst safety record among major airlines until it instituted a program requiring subordinates to speak up when there were problems. There are benefits to deferential, polite, and subtle conversation, but they are unlikely to be beneficial in stressful cockpit environments.

10. There are at least two non-genetic reasons Asian people excel at math (and some tests have suggested that Asians may have genetic _disadvantages_ in math). First, most commonly used Asian languages use a monosyllablic, ordered, regular system to describe numbers, unlike English and European languages. This gives young children up to a year's head start in math. Second, math often requires persistence and trial and error, characteristics also needed for successful rice farming, the dominant form of agriculture (and employment) in Asia even in the 20th century. Hilarious evidence of correlation of persistence with high math scores is found in results on the TIMSS, an international math exam. The beginning of the exam includes a tedious 120-question section that asks students about their parents' education, their friends, and their views on math, among other things. It is exhausting, requiring great _persistence_, and some students leave it partially blank. If you rank countries by how many of the survey questions their students completed, and by the TIMMS score, the lists are "exactly the same." Holy cow! At the tops of both lists were Singapore, South Korea, China (Taiwan), Hong Kong, and Japan.

11. Students from middle class and poor neighborhoods show an achievement gap in reading that widens over the years of elementary school. However, the financially poorer students progress (in terms of grades on standardized tests) the _same_ amount during the _academic_ year as the wealthier students. It is during the _summer_ break that better-off students with better-educated families continue to read and learn, while the less well-off students likely do not, and show major declines in autumn test scores compared to the previous spring. Students in "KIPP" (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools showed major success despite coming from low income neighborhoods, because of a much longer school day and academic year.

12. The author, Malcolm Gladwell, tells a story in the final chapter about how his family, and thus he, benefitted from light skin tones and changing racial attitudes in Jamaica. It's a stretch compared to the rest of the book, but gets you thinking and is an awkwardly charming read.

Outliers is about what makes people successful, and most of the book is effective at pointing out the effect of factors other than each person's individual talent or determination, particularly the family, the social lottery in terms of demographics, ethnicity or season of birth, and the opportunities provided by the economy. The author wisely does not define success, and looks at it in a variety of ways. It can be living long, rising to the top of a sport or an art, or accumulating wealth, but he does not include examples of scientists or politicians. He eloquently denounces crude metrics like IQs as predictors of success, as well as practices by schools or sport federations that choose young children for advanced programs by year of birth, and end up selecting the oldest within that year rather than the most talented.

The first part of the book is on subject and both entertaining and enlightening. Other reviewers have criticized it as anecdotal, unscientific, and poorly researched. The anecdotes, however, told me a few things I hadn't heard before, and, if they have been expressed better in earlier books, that may be but I have not read them and I credit the author for bringing them to my attention.

The second part, entitled "Legacy," on the other hand, is off topic. The ethnic theory of plane crashes, for example, is about the pitfalls of cross-cultural communications in a business where it must happen: Korean crews must talk with American air traffic controllers. Interesting though these challenges may be their connection with outliers and individual success is tenuous at best.

It gets worse in the chapter on rice paddies and math tests. The author alleges that a rice growing culture makes children good not only at math tests but at math itself, and just about everything he says in this chapter is overly general and questionable. First, if growing rice actually made people good at math, how come this body of knowledge was almost entirely developed in the Middle-East and Europe where rice was not a staple?

The author makes much of the conciseness of Chinese number words as an advantage for Asian children, but Japanese number words are not concise: the words one, six, seven and eight have two syllables, and Japanese has not one but two sets of number words in use, a native one and the one borrowed from Chinese. Conceptually, the Chinese way of counting is similar to the Roman system, and not particularly helpful for arithmetic. The key breakthrough in making additions easy was the numerals invented by Arabs.
He describes math in "the West," whatever that label may cover, as being a "rote learning system," but, compared at least to Japan, the teaching of math in the US or Europe involves considerably less rote learning. He also claims that "feudalism simply can't work in a rice economy" (p.236). What about Japan, which had a rice economy in a feudal system for 700 years? And, even though he acknowledges in a footnote that northern China grows wheat rather than rice, everywhere else, he equates Asian with rice growing.
The author also believes that long summer vacations were introduced in the US and Europe to give children rest. Another explanation is that children were given time off school so that they could help with harvests, and that the tradition endured after agriculture stopped being the main economic activity.

At the same time, he omits one obvious explanation for the excellence of students from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore on math tests: they are key to success in the competitive entrance exams for universities. For similar reasons, if students worldwide were given SATs, Americans would probably come out on top.

He concludes the book with the history of his own Jamaican family and how its circumstances shaped him. Is it relevant? Is the author one of the Outliers the book is about? In our own minds, we are all outliers.

Although I believe most of us have a bit of knowledge about why certain ethnic groups seem to do well from the perspective of success in the United State's way of measuring success, Gladwell really drives the point home and shows us the many inequities in certain sub-cultures as well as the huge advantage certain random things can give someone such as the year one was born, the month one was born, and particulary, by the certain culture and lineage one is born into and influenced by.

But the overall message to me is that hard work, focus and industriousness can lead virtually anyone almost anywhere. And that as a society, we need to focus on giving everyone a chance to succeed and to be better at developing a greater work ethic if we are going to be able to compete with our harder working and more dedicated competition overseas.

There's a certain amount of finger pointing to the wrong thinking of the white shoed country club set here in America, and how they sat idly by as others moved up and beyond them because of their biased and somewhat lazy ways. There's also some great explanations as to why some geniuses succeed and others never move beyond the average life of an average american. I felt that the book made some great points, especially regarding the cultural biases that we inherit from predecessors way back in our histories.

Read the book, it is fun, well written and sometimes a real eye opener.

This book was just as great as Blink and The Tipping Point. In many cases better. I loved his analysis of the Chinese language and why it helps the Chinese to "be smarter". It really shows people that we are not just what our DNA says, but a part of of culture and ancestry that truly helps dictate our future along with our DNA. Gladwell truly knows how to capture and reveal human behavior through statistical analysis, not just theories.

Malcolm Gladwell uses social science case studies and statistical data to debunk common myths we've developed about who we are and what we do: that some people are inherently more prone to success in a particular field, that billionaires and Nobel Prize winners are self-made men and women whose pluck and determination allowed them to rise above their peers, that success is the result of talent or genius alone.

In some respects, randomness determines success (where and when someone is born, into which class someone is born, etc.), Gladwell argues, and this can be humbling in its determinism; but at the end of the day, a family/community tradition of hard work and perseverance play as important a role as anything else (even more so than "talent"), and that can be uplifting to anyone who wants to maximize their own potential, their children's or our society's.

If you are a fan of Gladwell's other books, you will love this one too.

I happened to come across a copy that is not taken by 800 plus people waiting in public library system and read it over one weekend.
NYT Kakutani lady already dissed him I don't have to say much but it made me think.
He tells stories that are not really true or interesting in such way you just want to eat it whole anyway. This must be his greatest gift. And he is always soft on women and children, which is nice.
We know that there is no more feudal-ly place than Japanese rice paddy in the history. They are called 'water drinking only' farmers because they could not eat one grain of rice they harvested for their load let alone get killed by slashing of sword on the spot if ever splashed one drop of water onto low of the lowestest henchman of samurai class by accident while working hard. Talk about rewards for your hard work!
Michiko is a second generation of Japanese intellectual and smart enough not to dig Asian issues, Korean air pilots or rice paddy math kids, but I bet anyone in particular race or group of people that Malcolm discussed in this book would say, " What is he talking about? dah" yet I am sure everyone enjoyed it and concludes with stuff he must know for sure and his admirer would like to know by now - his own family history.
Well, if what he said at some semminer I went before is true and Gladwell's law comes to action, meaning every kids can go to Hunter college HS here in NYC, what then happen to all kids that graduate from Hunter? Surely more competition to get in to limited seat of elite-ist colleges even Malcolm's law makes every college equally elite -sh as ivies, then what? 1000s of Bill Gate and 1000s of Microsoft could not possibly compete in the market and I doubt every outlier would come up with something that is outstanding enough to beat competitors who are yet other million outliers thanks to Gladwell's law.
He knows it won't happen so he can only suggest, write about it and let us dream about it.
Oh, well Gladwell.

It is reflexive, well researched and written. Outliers is one of the rare original books that emerged from the US book writing industry in 2008.

What do you know about the Power Distance Index? What about the Uncertainty Avoidance factor? How about Individualism vs. Collectivism and where the US compares against the rest of the world? Did you know either of these can predict the behavior of people from various cultures? Did you know it can predict airplane crashes?

Have you ever heard of KIPP schools? Did you know there are over 50 of these in the nation that are changing the lives and minds of underprivileged children daily? Did you know that KIPP students achieve more in knowledge then their privileged counterparts?

How can you predict a child will become a successful hokey player? What was the best year to be born in order to become a billionaire as an industrialist, or IT tycoon, or the most successful lawyer?
Which is the hardest working agricultural nation in the world(Hint: Not the US)?

This book by far is one of my favorite and Malcolm Gladwell's best in my opinion. He writes with great clarity, logic and tremendous common sense that make one consume the pages faster than lunch. It will make you think. Seriously!

A very, very high recommendation. Try also his `Blink' and `The Tipping Point'. Another good book in similar manner is `Freakonomics'.

Many have been critical of this book for its research and like of scientific prowess. Gladwell is a writer- he has no (and claims no) academic premise in his books. I listened to this book which Gladwell narrates- and his voice is so compelling. Worst case, this is a fascinating subject and concept that is worth anyone's time.

Fantastic read from Gladwell as usual helping explain why successful people become successful. His many examples prove his thesis and his storylike writing made this a quick read that I couldn't put down.

Outliers is a fascinating and surprisingly easy read, considering the complexity of the topic. Gladwell disaggregates data on a variety of seemingly unrelated themes (yes, I'm a huge nerd for loving this) and weaves it into a suspenseful narrative. His critics complain that Gladwell's points are less than well-substantiated, but those accusations don't undermine the reasonable evidence that supports his ideas, nor do they detract from the compelling nature of the patterns Gladwell exposes (which are, without exception, thought-provoking).

Gladwell's purpose in Outliers is to contrast how success has been perceived culturally with the factors that actually contribute to becoming successful. His examples are not always intended to have educational implications, such as the chapter on why certain airlines have higher crash rates than others (would you believe, the culturally-based deferential treatment of the captain by the first officer? Fascinating.) But nearly every chapter inadvertently caused me to re-evaluate our educational norms and expectations.

For example, Gladwell establishes in the beginning of the book how children are punished by the age cut-offs established by school systems (students born right before the cut-off will lag behind their peers who are nearly a year older, and have to compensate for their disadvantage all the way through high school). It is inherently unfair to expect a child who is 7.1 years old to read at the same level as a child who is 7.10. This is a self-evident fact, yet few (beyond the Montessori movement) hav