25. Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell

Three for three. I heart Malcolm Gladwell.

Now that he's brilliantly explained the three agents of change in The Tipping Point and the concept of thin slicing in Blink ... Gladwell tackles the question of what makes some people so successful, while so many others never reach their potential.

In the first part of the book, he argues that success arises out of the steady accumulation of advantages: "when and where you are born, what your parents did for a living, and what the circumstances of your upbringing were[.]" One example: why are a disproportionate number of hockey players born in the first three months of the year? Youth hockey leagues determine eligibility by calendar year, and so children born on January 1 of one year play in the same league as those born on December 31 ... and since adolescents born earlier in the year are going to be bigger and more mature than the younger players in the same league, they are often identified early on (maybe too early!) as better athletes, which means more encouragement, extra coaching, and a higher likelihood of being selected to participate in elite hockey leagues.

In the second part of the book, Gladwell argues that we can learn why people succeed and how to make people better at what they do looking at cultural legacies. He shares a fascinating case study on why Asians are better at math - it'll take up several pages if I try to explain it here, but the gist of it is the words for the actual numbers in many Asian languages. "The number system in English is highly irregular. Not so in China, Japan and Korea. They have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten one. Twelve is ten two. Twenty-four is two ten four, and so on." Therefore: "Ask an English seven-year-old to add thirty-seven plus twenty two, in her head, and she has to convert the words to numbers (37 + 22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is nine and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tens-seven and two tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: It's five-tens nine."

I've read some critics who have said that his ideas are not "new," but honestly - are any ideas "new" anymore? I think he makes many points that have not been expounded upon in such a way before ... and besides that, Gladwell's writing style is exquisite and engaging, and his case studies are fascinating. Screw the critics! Gladwell deserves every bit of the praise he's gotten for all three of his books - all of which happen to be #1 New York Times bestsellers. I give this book five stars out of five - and I'll be first in line whenever his next book comes out.