| Outliers: The Story of Success |  | Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £9.99
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Rating:  109 reviews
Sales Rank: 169
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0141036257
EAN: 9780141036250
Publication Date: June 24, 2009
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 109
 Another good book March 7, 2010
N. Dagli (London, UK)
Another good book from Malcolm Gladwell. If you like his previous books you will not dissappointed with this one
Superb March 6, 2010
Jack Hobartson (The South of England)
Ignore the negative reviews, this is pure genius.
Gladwell writes so well, and in such a convincing manner that the theories he puts forward seems so obvious you wonder why you never thought of them yourself. I for one am convinced.
Must have! February 28, 2010
Katerina Hasapopoulos (UK)
This is an amazing book! It's a real eye opener, with some great gems that can be applied to your own life. It's a real page-turner too, and one that I would go back to time and time again!
Nurture over Nature February 20, 2010
In Place of Fear (Somerset, UK)
Malcolm Gladwell is a master of the essay form. He starts by painting a picture of an intriguing character, raises a teasing question, offers some relevant context that may help to answer the question; then he pans back to reveal other similar characters, propose his theme, and identify some implications. What we get is a series of inspiring stories, told in a friendly and engaging tone (as if over a coffee or a beer), peppered with real world detail about real people - whether Joe Flom and the New York takeover lawyers, Korean and Colombian airline pilots, or blood feuds in the Appalachian mountains - which raise as many questions as they answer. This is surely his primary purpose: to inspire us to think, and perhaps to think a little differently.
Gladwell does not write scientific papers - his skill is synthesis (he does however provide copious notes on his sources). Nor can he be reduced to soundbites - he demands greater engagement than that. If you will accept him on his terms he enriches. He has found the perfect form and forum for his particular talents; and I believe Outliers contains his most coherent work to date.
His theme here is that we have gone too far in overvaluing the role of individual talent above environment / opportunity and sheer hard work - the celebrity 'cult of genius'. Examples could be Tiger Wood's rewards from his talent for golf, Bills Joy and Gates from their talents for computer programming, and how investment bankers justify their rights to enormous salaries and bonuses as deservedly belonging to their individual talents (but implicitly downplaying the roles their societies and companies have played in nurturing these talents and providing an environment that allows them to reap their rewards).
From the last example, I would place Outliers within a wider intellectual trend that includes Michael Sandel's writing on Justice and Barack Obama's political philosophy, and seeks to reposition justice and some conception of the common good above individual freedom. Malcolm Gladwell's style can be criticised as exaggerating the contribution of environment / opportunity in telling his stories, but he would surely argue he is deliberately upping the contrast by removing shades of grey to reveal a more dramatic picture in black and white.
Gladwell gets into the most contentious territory later in the book where he merges hard work with environment in arguing that some cultures have imbued their offspring with certain cultural advantages and disadvantages. He cites the advantage provided by successive generations of meaningful work to New York's Jewish lawyers and South-East Asia's mathematicians - and the disadvantages of the 'culture of honour' inherited by the people of the US South from their herdsman ancestors, and high power-distance cultures as a driver of plane crashes among Korean and Colombian flight crews. Handled insensitively, this could lead to unconstructive generalisations, but Gladwell is careful accentuate the benefits of such understanding - how identifying the role power-distance helped Korean Air to massively improve its safety record while still using Korean flight crews. Applying the 'culture of honour' insight could also help improve understanding in various regions of conflict around the world...
I do, however, find the '10,000-Hour Rule' excessively simplistic. It has to be a general truism that, if sufficient talent and opportunity is there, more practice will increase the changes of success - but I do not think the prominence Gladwell gives to the number 10,000 helps him to make his case.
Excellent service February 19, 2010
Philippa Hack (London)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
All his books are great. A lengthier description about the book would help but since this was a recommendation I knew to buy it.
Service was great.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 109
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