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| Outliers: The Story of Success | 
 enlarge | Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Allen Lane
Category: Book
List Price: £16.99
Buy New: £9.50
You Save: £7.49 (44%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (18 reviews)
Sales Rank: 34
Languages: English (Unknown), English (Original Language), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 1846141214
EAN: 9781846141218
ASIN: 1846141214
Publication Date: November 18, 2008
Release Date: November 18, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Is personal success really personal? December 29, 2008
I always argued with friends that we never quite know how a successful individual or a company as made it big.
Of course we all know about the endless working hours, the "talented" individual and the help of a focused team.
But if this was the rule we will have had far more successful people and companies.
Gladwell analyse in a very entertaining and insightful way, how the individual itself is just a minor part of a far bigger mechanism that takes place to make his life a success. Social environment, culture, ethnicity, family background, timing and even generation size play an amazing part on the reason why people outperform their peers.
Thousands of self-help books and videos that focus on just your ability to "make it big" (and the slightly guilt feeling of not doing enough) can finally be put aside and considered what they are, self-help books for the writer's fortune...
 slightly underwhealming December 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I wanted to love this, really I did, but it's one very simple idea (albeit a fairly good one) spun out to fill an entire book. Not up to the standard of "The Tipping Point".
Entertaining Read December 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm a fan of Malcolm Gladwell having read his previous Blink and The Tipping Point. All his books are about interesting topics and are told in a way that keeps the reader engaged. Similarly to the other books the criticism can always be made that he makes about 4-5 valid points and stretches them out to a full book but when the writing is engaging and takes you on a journey it doesn't really matter.
The book itself takes you through what drives success. Arguing that it's a combination of intelligence (both IQ and emotional intelligence), luck (opportunties and timing), cultural context and hard work (the much-reported 10,000 hours). All this could be argued to be fairly obvious but through the examples and anecdotes Gladwell dispelled many myths at the same time as entertaining.
All-in-all a good read.
Not as good as the other two December 28, 2008
I read Blink and the Tipping Point, both of which were excellent. After reading a section of the book in the Guardian I was pleased to receive this for christmas. I rattled through it, and there's some interesting stuff. However, there's about enough material for the magazine article, and little more. He comes up with his theory, throws a few case studies at it, and that's it. The basic theory is that your background is as important as your skills - that geniuses have to be lucky too. Not really as sophisticated or interesting as the other books - maybe it's because the "nature v nurture" debate has been going on for ages and he doesn't add a lot that's new.
Fluffy Little Kitten in Fluffy Little Kitten Falls Over
 The lucky circumstances behind success stories December 22, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Outliers, in statistics, are results that are so extreme that they are generally not taken into account in calculations. So extreme that they are literally off the charts. Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers: The Story of Success is about people that experience this kind of extreme success. People like the most succesful hockey and soccer players. People like Bill Gates. Or the Beatles. What is it that makes people so succesful?
First, it is hard work. To become an expert in a field, one needs at least about 10,000 hours of labor. Like an Asian farmer toiling away on his rice paddy field. The proverbial 99% transpiration that comes with the 1% inspiration.
Second, it is lucky circumstances. Sheer luck. Like being born at the beginning of the year instead of at the end (which makes a surprisingly significant difference in your chances of becoming a top hockey player). Or the country you're from. Or the language you've been raised in (English gives you an early math disadvantage of about a year compared to Chinese or Japanese).
In his previous bestseller The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Gladwell shows that small initial differences can make for a huge end effect on a society. Also his Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking was about conclusions we all draw from small differences in quick thought processes. In the same way, this book shows how sometimes incredibly small differences can tip somebody towards extreme success.
Small differences also made for the success of Malcolm Gladwell himself. One of the most precious gifts he allegedly got from his father is the memory of "seeing him work at his desk and realizing that he was happy". The same joyous work ethic oozes from the pages of this book.
Gladwell reads like a detective. He brings you science like a professional storyteller. The science, on the other hand, sometimes suffers a bit from this high readability (some conclusions about cultural causes are quite debatable). There are no footnotes in this book, but in the back of the publication, each chapter does have a number of notes to back up some of his claims.
This book is definitely an entertaining read. It is also a good way to weapon yourself against the abundance of success stories that sound a tad too good to be a full version of the truth.
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