Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

I had heard a lot of hype about Malcolm Gladwell's books and decided to try his latest.

ISBN: 978-0316017923
format: Hardcover
pages: 320
publisher: Little, Brown and Company

pub. date: 2008-11-18
started reading: 2009-01-02
finished reading: 2008-01-08

Let me start by saying that I bought this book expecting something in the line of Freakonomics. That is, in my view, a book of clever and entertaining insights that attempt to use various studies and observations to prove a point. Interesting and thought provoking, and good conversation material, but classifiable as entertainment and not real science.

Perhaps it is my background as a mathematician, but the is a small part of me that always remains bothered by the appraoch these books take and where they try to pass off what they do as 'fact'. You know the saying, 'a little bit of information is dangerous'? These books are good examples of that where they give you one side of the arguement and arm a legion of 'experts' in your city with what they now know as the way the world works. Crude and silly generalisations abound in Outliers and it does worry me that many people will take what he says as gospel without first challenging it in their own minds and looking for the exceptions to his... well... exceptions!

That said, the books are very engaging and well written. Gladwell has a knack for telling interesting anecdotes that build on each other and support his thesis.

The main thesis of Outliers would appear to be that no one owes their success only to themselves, but rather it takes a unique combination of events - right place, right time, right person - to make success happen. Using figures from Bill Gates to Wayne Gretzkey, Gladwell shows how those same people in different places and times might never have risen to the spots they did.

While this seems intuitive to me, I acknowledge that our society today tends to equate success to the individual and their talent and Gladwell's call to pay attention to the fact that those people had a lot of 'luck' along the way helps to bring people down off the pedestals we place them on, and in so doing, reminds us all that our own success lies in looking for those opportunities that are around us.

So perhaps if Gladwell has any words of wisdom, it is that any of us can be successful, if we can recognize the hidden and unique factors building to our own success.