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.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Gives You A Lot to Think ABout!
Comment: My hubby got this book for Christmas, and we both read it at the beach over the holidays. It was a quick read, but the facts and numbers and continual restating of what you had previously read did bog us down somewhat. If you like trivia or like knowing useless info about others, this is your type of book. Otherwise, the material is nothing to write home about (or Amazon?)
Customer Rating: Summary: A Novel Insight
Comment: Gladwell provides a novel perspective on why some have made brilliant successes of their careers. Unfortunately, it is long on anecdote and short on analysis of the ecofactors that govern people's lives. There are no lessons for anyone who wishes to emulate Bill Gates. Its still a matter of talent, drive and opportunity.
Customer Rating: Summary: How to "unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't"
Comment: In reviews of Malcolm Gladwell's previous books, The Tipping Point and Blink, I express an opinion that Gladwell offers an insight that others have previously expressed and then requires 300+ pages to discuss it. His key points in both books could have been made in an article. Gladwell's "tipping point"(2002), for example, is essentially the same as Michael Kami's "trigger point" (1988) and Andrew Gove "inflection point" (1996). (Gladwell does acknowledge the importance of an article, "Broken Windows," co-authored by James Wilson and George Kelling for The Atlantic Monthly in 1982). When I began to read Outliers, therefore, I feared that Gladwell would once again offer a thoughtful but verbose examination of a by-now familiar insight: success requires more than extraordinary talent.
That said, Outliers is (in my opinion) his most significant and most valuable book thus far. As the Epilogue clearly indicates, this is also his most personal book. In it, Gladwell demonstrates superior storyteller skills as he discusses several quite different situations that demonstrate that "the values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are...[Those who succeed] owe something to parentage and patronage. [They] may look like they did all by themselves. But in fact 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...It's not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are [begin italics] from [end italics] that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't."
Gladwell provides many different versions of "the story of success" involving those who demonstrate what sociologists call "accumulative advantage." For example, in any youth sports competition (especially hockey) that groups players according to the calendar year of birth, those who are born in January, February, or March are more likely to be bigger, better coordinated, and more talented because of "the phenomenon of relative age." They will play more often, receive more individual attention, and be selected to play on better teams because they were born closest to the cut-off date. Their success follows a predictable course. "Outliers are those who have been given opportunities - and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them." Clearly, Gladwell agrees with Geoff Colvin that "talent is overrated." As does Colvin, he cites The 10,000-Hour Rule and suggests that "once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, [begin italics] much [end italics] harder."
John Maxwell makes the same point in Talent Is Never Enough. If it were, "then the most effective and influential people would always be the most talented ones but that is often not the case...Clearly talent isn't everything." That said, he hastens to add, talent is worthy of our admiration and must be perceived in the proper perspective. Maxwell's key point is that all of us have a choice, actually several choices, and can determine to what extent (if any) we take full advantage of the talents we have, such as they are. "If you do, you will add value to yourself, add value to others, and accomplish much more than you dreamed was possible." Gladwell agrees but would presumably stress, also, the importance of others (family members, teachers, coaches, clergy, patrons, and mentors) to being able to commit 10,000 hours, "the magic number of greatness," to (Colvin's term) "deliberate practice." The success of the various outliers whom Gladwell discusses is not exceptional or mysterious. "It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all."
Customer Rating: Summary: Outliers
Comment: Once again, Malcolm Gladwell has provided an incisive inight into contemporary processes in our society.
Customer Rating: Summary: Malcom's books are great!!!
Comment: Malcolm Gladwell books are very well written by this young author. It is worthwhile to invest time and money to learn with his ideas!!!
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