"We need to look beyond the individual". This quote reflects on what this book is all about. ( )

Malcolm Gladwell is a different type of psychology book than I usually read. He has a place introducing ideas in broad strokes, but it’s a lower tier of informative than books written by psychologists who have broad understanding of the research and have done some original study of their own. If you want an extremely accessible introduction to the idea of expertise and the value of practice, this is OK.


If you want a well sourced, more comprehensive understanding of what the research does and doesn’t say, and how to apply the principles supported by the research, read Peak by K Anders Ericsson and Robert Poole. It’s denser, but it discusses some of the flaws of Gladwell’s presentation and is overall held to a more rigorous standard. ( )

Gladwell invites the reader to look deep into "outliers' exceptions to a rule, to truly understand how they have come about. He looks at a series of cases, from the well-known to the obscure, to establish patterns and show underlying reasons for the exceptions that achieved success.

The reading is compelling and the cases are always interesting. However, the main theme and the conclusion seem almost incidental to the book, summarily treated, and sometimes I was wondering why I was reading what I was reading... a better follow-through and stronger conclusion, recapping findings and tying them together, is definitely missing.
Overall it does provide an interesting perspective that might lead to a better understanding of edge cases, but it does lack a constructive summary. ( )

Gladwell is the “myth buster” of psychology and sociology. He takes commonly held assumptions and shows, based on his analysis, they are either not true or limited. In this book, he looks at phenomena outside of our normal everyday experience. He posits that if we examine the lives of outliers (such as Bill Gates, Robert Oppenheimer, Bill Joy, and the Beatles), it will provide insight into how to improve our world. He wants to change the way we think about achievement and success. There is an ironic element in this work, as one of his findings is that outliers can be explained by ordinary factors, such as opportunity, hard work, practice, environment, cultural legacy, luck, and being in the right place at the right time in history.

The author explodes the myth of individualism (which he calls the “self-made man”) and “the best and the brightest.” He believes we are squandering talent. He examines such unlikely topics as rice farming, airline accidents, hockey, and musical auditions. He ends the book on a personal note by taking a look at his family history. I am not sure some of these wide-ranging topics completely support his theories, as there are many more variables than those he singles out, but I found it informative and worth my time.
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Very interesting book about the hidden patterns which determine how extremely successful people ("outliers") get to where they are. It seems like many discussions of this book seem to point to the 10 000 hours theory as a major point, but that was the least interesting part to me. Gladwell argues that success comes from a fortunate combination of a number of factors out of our control-- perfect birth dates, being at the right place at just the right time, being among particular socio-economic classes, etc. He shows that it isn't only because successful people have worked hard that they are so successful, it's because they happen to live in certain conditions which gave them the perfect opportunities to lead them toward their sucess. Gladwell is an excellent writer with a knack for storytelling-- not in the sense that he's making up things but he knows how to take a true story with real facts and tell it in a way that is exciting and engrossing.
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