Monday, June 24, 2013

Outliers

Outliers: The Story of Success
Being the fanatic fan of fiction that I am, I did not originally expect to love Outliers as much as I did. Several pages in, I was sucked in by the heart disease anecdote, and continued to be mind-blown throughout as Gladwell revealed the stunning correlations between the success of hockey players' and their birth dates, ethnicity and math finesse (http://www.memecenter.com/search/math%20asian), and culture and plane crashes.

Gladwell reveals to us, within a span of 309 pages, the truth about success - that it is never a one-man-journey or even solely a luck-dependent opportunity. There are no true 'outliers' on the graph of success that succeed 'against all odds' because each and every one of those outliers - Bill Gates or The Beatles, for example - will always have some kind of special advantage, whether it be linked to culture or ethnicity, that gives him/her one foot forward on the long and winding path to success.

I finished this book with a pile of statistics and logically accurate theories all plunked above my cranium, so am infinitely thankful for Malcom Gladwell (and my friend who got me this book for my birthday). Gladwell writes in a clean and uncomplicated prose (although I've heard that he was criticized for the latter) that renders this book nearly universally accessible and perfect for a quick, delightful and ultimately unforgettable read.

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