Outliers: The Story of Success
Selected Book Details
- Hardcover
- Edition: 1
- Author: Malcolm Gladwell
- Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
- Release Date: November 2008
- ISBN-10: 0316017922
- ISBN-13: 9780316017923
- List Price: $27.99
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryAmazon 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." |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
interesting book
Rating:
This is a very interesting book and it will give you acouple of things to think about.
Great insight into why some make it and some don't.
Rating:
Bought the audio version and "read" during my commute. Very worthwhile. Great intro. Never had to feel like fast forwarding. It helped that the author narrated the book. Great insight into why some make it and some don't. I'm a fan of the book and the author."
An Outlier Itself
Rating:
From the first pages of the first chapter, this book grabs your attention in a way few nonfiction books can. The writing is superb and and the ideas intriguing. Gladwell has a style that quickly draws you in and makes you tear through the book, eager for him to reveal the mysteries he has uncovered.
In the nearly two years since I first read this book, I am sure I've discussed it with dozens of different people. Partly that is a result of it's popularity; I often find other people have read it as well. But it also speaks to the captivating nature of the subject matter. The ideas in the book are relevant. They color the way I look at the world. I think differently for having read this book. There aren't a whole lot of books I can say that about, but this surely is one of them.
-- Doug Warshauer, Author of If I'm So Smart Where Did All My Money Go: Balancing Your Financial Objectives for Lasting Wealth
Got me an easy A in English Lit but otherwise, don't bother.
Rating:
This was a required book for my college English Lit class. It was an easy read and doing a report on it was also easy. However, after the opening hook, it relies on anecdotes and junk science. Read it for fun, and its few thought provoking moments. But if you are a parent, don't use this as a gauge for Little Johnny or Jane's future because they weren't born in the right time or at the right place. It's good for an A in an English class, but that's about all.
Interesting Read About Factors Contributing To Success
Rating:
"Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell is an extremely well-written, insightful, and fascinating evaluation of what external factors in a person's life lead to success or failure. The book also examines the effects culture has on people and how those effects influence peoples' lives.
Gladwell writes: "The sense of possibility so necessary for success comes not just from inside us or from our parents. It comes from our time: from the particular opportunities that our particular place in history presents us with."
Gladwell writes about the microcomputer revolution and tells us most successful entrepreneurs during that revolution were born in the mid-1950s. This made them just old enough to take advantage of the microcomputer revolution that began in the mid-1970s.
Gladwell concludes: "I don't mean to suggest, of course, that every software tycoon in Silicon Valley was born in 1955. Some weren't .... But there are very clearly patterns here, and what's striking is how little we seem to want to acknowledge them. We pretend that success is exclusively a matter of individual merit. ... Their success was not just of their own making. It was a product of the world in which they grew up."
Not only is the year of birth important, but, surprisingly, the month of birth is sometimes crucial too. In his outstanding chapter, "The Matthew Effect," Gladwell examines the months of birth of star athletes and shows that when junior sports have eligibility cut-off dates, the effects of those cut-off date propagates all the way up to the professional level of play.
For example, in Canada, most professional hockey players are born in January. The next most popular birth months are February and March. Forty percent of professional Canadian hockey players are born in these months. Thirty percent are born in the next three months of April to June, and only 20 percent are born between October and December. Why is this?
Gladwell explains: "It's simply that in Canada the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey is January 1. A boy who turns ten on January 2, then, could be playing alongside someone who doesn't turn ten until the end of the year--and, at that age, in preadolescence, a twelve-month gap in age represents an enormous difference in physical maturity."
The implications of this sort of "self-fulfilling prophecy" are important to parents. Gladwell says parents often contemplate holding children who are born at the end of the calendar year back from kindergarten until they are a bit more mature. Gladwell says many parents probably decide to enroll the kids anyway because they assume any disadvantage the child suffers will go away with time. "But it doesn't. It's just like hockey. The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over the child born at the end of the year persists. It locks children into patterns of achievement and underachievement, encouragement and discouragement, that stretch on and on for years[,]" concludes Gladwell.
Gladwell writes about the academic and career advantages children born to richer parents have over children born to less affluent parents. Richer parents and financially poor parents have markedly different parenting styles. Richer parents tend to cultivate their kids, shuttle them between different activities, encourage them to interact with the adult world, and advocate strongly for them. Gladwell says poorer parents often believe children will just grow up and develop on their own. They also view the child's world as relatively inconsequential and separate from their adult world. Impoverished parents are often intimidated by authority, so they don't seek special privileges for their children. Children from more affluent homes learn social skills that help them succeed in life. On the downside, children from more affluent homes are often more self-centered and, literally, spoiled.
What about the role of public or private education in determining how well children do? Gladwell addresses this in detail in a well-woven chapter titled "Marita's Bargain." He tells us the story of a young girl named Marita who attends an intensive school in the Bronx called KIPP Academy. The students put in massive amounts of time, and they do exceptionally well, especially in math. It reminded me of the film "Sand and Deliver." Come to school early, stay late, come in on Saturday, and work through the summer. Yep, that'll do it.
While many politicians talk about the need to improve schools in impoverished areas, Gladwell tells us the achievement gap between poorer and richer students actually occurs during summer vacation, when poorer students lose ground academically. Gladwell concludes: "Virtually all of the advantage that wealthy students have over poor students is the result of the differences in the way privileged kids learn while they are not in school. ... For its poorest students, America doesn't have a school problem. It has a summer vacation problem..." It becomes clear the majority of American students would benefit from much shorter summer vacations.
To be good in math requires effort. And, the cultures of many countries encourages students to work hard and instills the belief that if they work hard, they will learn. All students are expected to succeed. In America, by contrast, there is more of a false belief that talent in math is innate. Gladwell shows us that cultural differences can affect learning. Drawing upon the book "The Number Sense" by Stanislas Dehaene, we learn that Asians may have a built-in cultural advantage in learning math. In particular, the Chinese have shorter words for numbers, which allows them to remember more numbers.
For example, Gladwell tells us that only about half of Americans can remember the sequence of 4,8,5,3,9,7,6 after 20 seconds of study. Yet, nearly all Chinese can remember the sequence, because the Chinese language allows all those numbers to be said in a two-second period.
I highly recommend "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. The book is very well written and packed with insight.
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