Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell: A Book Review

In general, I'm not a big fan of non-fiction. And if you take out the celebrity biography genre form non-fiction, I don't read that much of it at all. So when I say that a non-fiction book is good, you can believe me. And Outliers, The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell is good book!

I know everyone plays that little game of naming their top five all-time favorite books, so it's no surprise that I've only had one non-fiction book on my list, ever. But that book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt has been on my list for a long time. I enjoyed that book immensely and have spent a number of years trying to find something that rivals it.

Malcolm Gladwell's two previous books, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking were OK, but nowhere near as riveting as Freakonomics. In Gladwell's defense, he has an easy, story-telling style of writing- it was just that the subject matter wasn't as engaging as that of Freakonomics. Gladwell's theories are sometimes complicated and controversial, but he manages to present them in a way that's very easy to understand. I think I was secretly harboring a lot of hope for him.

When Outliers: The Story of Success came out the fact that it's authored by Malcolm Gladwell was enough to pique my interest. Not enough to buy it though, so I put my name on the holds list at the library. I finally got the book and I have to say that this is one to buy! I was a bit skeptical about the subject matter of Outliers, though. The Story of Success? I can see my already fragile self-esteem wilting at the thought. Will reading the book be an exercise in torturous self-abuse proving that my mother was right in constantly calling me a disappointment? Is this going to make me feel like an even bigger loser? Am I going to be reminded of every boat I've ever missed? Hey, at my age it's time to put the demons of the past behind and start moving forward. I read the book.

So what did I learn from this book? In truth, I couldn't possibly tell you everything without writing a book of my own, but I will give you a couple of teasers. One point that Gladwell makes (and expounds upon) is from a study done at Berlin's elite Academy of Music. Here's an excerpt from page 39 of Outliers: "The striking thing about Ericsson's study is that he and his colleagues couldn't find any "naturals", musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any "grinds", people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn't have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer form another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder."

Later in the book Gladwell talks about the correlation between effort and mathematical ability. An excerpt from page 248: "Boe's point is that we could predict precisely the order in which every country would finish in the Math Olympics without asking a single math question. All we would have to do is give them some task measuring how hard they are willing to work. In fact, we wouldn't even have to give them a task. We would be able to predict which countries are best at math simply by looking at which cultures place the highest emphasis on effort and hard work."

Intrigued? Then you'll really enjoy reading Outliers: The Story of Success! There are many more tidbits that I'd love to share, but I don't want to spoil the whole book for you. Far and away, this is Gladwell's best book. Like I said before, I would recommend buying this, not just borrowing it. It's the type of book that you'll find yourself referring to in conversation. Additionally, Outliers is a terrific choice for a book club discussion.

On a scale of 1- 10, I give Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell a whole-hearted 10. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell is a Little, Brown and Company Hachette Book Group book published in 2008. The ISBN number is 978-0-316-01792-3.