Book Bearings
Outliers
- 320 pages · about 5 hours
- First published 2008
- 32 editions
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1 About this book
Outliers: The Story of Success, published in 2008, is Malcolm Gladwell's argument that exceptional achievement owes less to individual talent than people like to think. Success, he says, depends heavily on opportunity, timing, family background and culture. His cases include why so many Canadian ice-hockey players are born early in the year, how Bill Gates and the Beatles each had unusual chances to practice before anyone had heard of them, why two men of exceptional intelligence ended up with very different fortunes, and how cultural habits inherited from earlier generations shape the way people learn and make decisions.
- Psychology
- Social Environment
- Business & economics
- Social psychology
- Economics
- Business
- Successful people
- Success
2 What to expect
Popular social science about what lies behind exceptional success, arguing that birth date, family, culture and lucky opportunities matter as much as talent. Each chapter is a story, from hockey players and the Beatles to law firms and rice farming, and the book made the rule of ten thousand hours of practice famous. It is smooth and entertaining, and researchers have criticized it for simplifying studies and choosing examples to fit.
Good for readers who want: popular social science, the roots of success, and stories with surprising explanations.
3 About Malcolm Gladwell
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
4 More by Malcolm Gladwell
5 Similar books
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- The Dip by Seth Godin
- Tools of Titans by Timothy Ferriss
- Drive by Daniel H. Pink
- Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
- Misbehaving by Richard H. Thaler
- Rising Strong by Brené Brown
- Getting Past No by William Ury