Outliers: The Story of Success
Author: Malcom Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published Date: November 18,2008
Pages: 304
Source: Wikipedia dated 25th October 2011 Page 1 of 4
In Outliers, Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of
success. To support his thesis, he examines the causes of why the majority of
Canadian ice hockey players are born in the first few months of the calendar
year, how Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates achieved his extreme wealth, and
how two people with exceptional intelligence, Christopher Langan and J.
Robert Oppenheimer, end up with such vastly different fortunes.
Throughout the publication, Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour
Rule", claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a
matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.
The publication debuted at number one on the bestseller lists for The New York
Times and The Globe and Mail, holding the position on the former for eleven
consecutive weeks. Generally well-received by critics, Outliers was considered
more personal than Gladwell's other works, and some reviews commented on
how much Outliers felt like an autobiography.
Reviews praised the connection that Gladwell draws between his own
background and the rest of the publication to conclude the book. Reviewers
also appreciated the questions posed by Outliers, finding it important to
determine how much individual potential is ignored by society. However, the
lessons learned were considered anticlimactic and dispiriting. The writing
style, deemed easy to understand, was criticized for oversimplifying complex
sociological phenomena.
Focusing on
Synopsis
Outliers has two parts: "Part One: Opportunity" contains five chapters, and
"Part Two: Legacy" has four. The book also contains an Introduction and
Epilogue.
outliers, defined by Gladwell as people who do not fit into our
normal understanding of achievement, Outliers deals with exceptional people,
especially those who are smart, rich, and successful, and those who operate at
the extreme outer edge of what is statistically plausible.
Outliers: The Story of Success
Author: Malcom Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published Date: November 18,2008
Pages: 304
Source: Wikipedia dated 25th October 2011 Page 2 of 4
The book offers examples that include the musical ensemble The
Beatles, Microsoft's co-founder Bill Gates, and the theoretical physicist J.
Robert Oppenheimer.
In the introduction, Gladwell lays out the purpose of Outliers: "It's not enough
to ask what successful people are like. [...] It is only by asking where they are
from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't."
Throughout the publication, he discusses how family, culture, and friendship
each play a role in an individual's success, and he constantly asks whether
successful people deserve the praise that we give them.
The book begins with Gladwell's research on why a disproportionate number
of elite Canadian hockey players are born in the first few months of the
calendar year. The answer, he points out, is that since youth hockey leagues
determine eligibility by calendar year, children born on January 1 play in the
same league as those born on December 31 in the same year. Because children
born earlier in the year are bigger and maturer than their younger
competitors, they are often identified as better athletes, leading to extra
coaching and a higher likelihood of being selected for elite hockey leagues.
This phenomenon in which "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is
dubbed "accumulative advantage" by Gladwell, while sociologist Robert K.
Merton calls it "the Matthew Effect", named after a biblical verse in the Gospel
of Matthew: "For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have
abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which
he hath." Outliers asserts that success depends on the idiosyncrasies of the
selection process used to identify talent just as much as it does on the athletes'
natural abilities.
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell interviews Bill Gates and focuses on the
opportunities given to him throughout his lifetime that have led to his
success.
Outliers: The Story of Success
Author: Malcom Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published Date: November 18,2008
Pages: 304
Source: Wikipedia dated 25th October 2011 Page 3 of 4
A common theme that appears throughout Outliers is the "10,000-Hour Rule",
based on a study by Anders Ericsson. Gladwell claims that greatness requires
enormous time, using the source of The Beatles' musical talents and Gates'
computer savvy as examples.
The Beatles performed live in Hamburg, Germany over 1,200 times from 1960
to 1964, amassing more than 10,000 hours of playing time, therefore meeting
the 10,000-Hour Rule. Gladwell asserts that all of the time The Beatles spent
performing shaped their talent, "so by the time they returned to England from
Hamburg, Germany, 'they sounded like no one else. It was the making of
them.” Gates met the 10,000-Hour Rule when he gained access to a high
school computer in 1968 at the age of 13, and spent 10,000 hours
programming on it.[
Gladwell explains that reaching the 10,000-Hour Rule, which he considers the
key to success in any field, is simply a matter of practicing a specific task that
can be accomplished with 20 hours of work a week for 10 years. He also notes
that he himself took exactly 10 years to meet the 10,000-Hour Rule, during his
brief tenure at
In Outliers, Gladwell interviews Gates, who says that unique access to a
computer at a time when they were not commonplace helped him succeed.
Without that access, Gladwell states that Gates would still be "a highly
intelligent, driven, charming person and a successful professional", but that
he might not be worth US$50 billion.
The American Spectator and his more recent job at The
Washington Post.
Reemphasizing his theme, Gladwell continuously reminds the reader that
genius is not the only or even the most important thing when determining a
person's success. Using an anecdote to illustrate his claim, he discusses the
story of Christopher Langan, a man who ended up working on a horse farm
in rural Missouri despite having an IQ of 195 (Gladwell claims that Einstein's
was 150). Gladwell points out that Langan has not reached a high level of
success because of the environment he grew up in. With no one in Langan's
life and nothing in his background to help him take advantage of his
exceptional gifts, he had to find success by himself. "No one—not rock stars,
not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even
geniuses—ever makes it alone," writes Gladwell.
Outliers: The Story of Success
Author: Malcom Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published Date: November 18,2008
Pages: 304
Source: Wikipedia dated 25th October 2011 Page 4 of 4
Later, Gladwell compares Langan with Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic
bomb. Noting that they typify innate natural abilities that should have helped
them both succeed in life, Gladwell argues that Oppenheimer's upbringing
made a pivotal difference in his life. Oppenheimer grew up in one of the
wealthiest neighborhoods in Manhattan, was the son of a successful
businessman and a painter, attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School
on Central Park West, and was afforded a childhood of concerted cultivation.
Outliers argues that these opportunities gave Oppenheimer the chance to
develop the practical intelligence necessary for success. Gladwell then
provides an anecdote: When Oppenheimer was a student at University of
Cambridge, he made an unsuccessful attempt to poison one of his tutors.
When he was about to be expelled from the school, he was able to
compromise with the school's administrators to allow him to continue his
studies at the university, using skills that he gained during his cultivated
upbringing.
Before the book concludes, Gladwell writes about the unique roots of
his Jamaican mother, Joyce, a descendant of African slaves. Joyce
attended University College in London, where she met and fell in love with
Graham Gladwell, a young mathematician. After moving together to Canada,
Graham became a math professor and Joyce a writer and therapist. While
Gladwell acknowledges his mother's ambition and intelligence, he also points
out opportunities offered to his parents that helped them live a life better than
those of other slave descendants in the West Indies.
Gladwell also explains that, in the 18th century, a white plantation owner in
Jamaica bought a female slave and made her his mistress. This act
inadvertently saved the slave and her offspring from a life of brutal servitude.
As one of the slave's descendants, this turn of luck led to Gladwell's relatively
successful position in life.
Summarizing the publication, Gladwell notes that success "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," and at the end of the
book, he remarks, "Outliers wasn't intended as autobiography. But you could
read it as an extended apology for my success."
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