April Book of the Month: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

It isn't really my type of book, but I didn't hate it. It kind of surprises me how much acclaim it is getting though, because it is basically saying that you can be successful with hard work and perseverance, but you will never be REALLY successful unless you are in the right place at the right time (which includes things you typically have little control over, like when you were born, where you went to school, even who your parents were, where they were from, etc.). I mean, it makes a lot of sense to me what he is saying, but doesn't anyone else find that just a little bit depressing? If you're born even three years too soon or too late in some cases, you missed your window. Or you weren't the right ethnicity, or lived in the wrong city.

On the other hand, all I have to go off of is these hand-picked cases too. I'd be interested in seeing a wider list of some of these particular occupations and see if every single person that is mega-successful fits the mold he is describing, or only some of them.

Stuff about rice farmers, hillbillies, etc. was interesting, but in a book about outliers, it seems strange that he devoted about half the book to that. He showed me why asians were better at math, sure, but they weren't light years better at math like Bill Gates is light years better than others in his field (so to speak anyway, you get my point). That's not an outlier really, that's just one group being somewhat better than another group at something. Even if they are substantially better, they still aren't really outliers.

Also couldn't have cared less about his family history. It just showed the sequence of events leading up to him being here, writing this book. We could all come up with some random sequence of events like that if we tried. He didn't even make the claim that he's anything special (an outlier), so how is one family's history any more astounding than millions of others?

Just seemed like he completely got away from the whole "outlier" thing after the first half of the book. It made me think about things, which is the point I guess, but it seemed like it should have been two separate books to me. Or called something else.

I don't agree that it is the exact opposite, because he mentions several times how people can be relatively successful DESPITE their opportunities (to borrow Grimmlokk's term)...you just can't be mega-successful (an outlier). No one is going to say that those guys that worked in the "established" law firms weren't successful, they just missed out on the opportunity to be the "superstars" due to whatever accident of birth, nationality, what have you. At least, that's what I took from the book.

You might be right, maybe I'm not reading it the way he intended it, but that just means that my original point about it being a fairly depressing book is even more apt, so why do people think this is such an inspiring book?? It is basically telling you that you're fucked unless you put in all the work AND have the opportunity, but if you lack the opportunity all that work is worthless. Unless it makes people feel better about having a lackluster life I suppose, because they can point to something they couldn't control, like their birthday, and say, "See, I was destined to fail anyway, so I didn't even try!"

I just don't get why people praise it so much if that is the entire message. We all sort of knew what he is saying to one extent or another anyway, but we don't ever really think it will limit us. But this is like he's laying out a universal law for why pretty much every single one of us is fucked, and that seems sort of depressing to me, and thus I have no clue why so many people spout that it changed their lives, etc.