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Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers: The Story of Success Hardcover – Illustrated, 18 November 2008

by Malcolm Gladwell (Author)

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Learn what sets high achievers apart -- from Bill Gates to the Beatles -- in this #1 bestseller from "a singular talent" (New York Times Book Review).

In this stunning book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Little, Brown and Company
Publication date

18 November 2008
Dimensions

13.97 x 2.54 x 21.08 cm
ISBN-10

9780316017923
ISBN-13

978-0316017923
Lexile measure

1080L
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Product description

Review

"In the vast world of nonfiction writing, Malcolm Gladwell is as close to a singular talent as exists today...Outliers is a pleasure to read and leaves you mulling over its inventive theories for days afterward."―David Leonhardt, New York Times Book Review

"The explosively entertaining Outliers might be Gladwell's best and most useful work yet...There are both brilliant yarns and life lessons here: Outliers is riveting science, self-help, and entertainment, all in one book."―Gregory Kirschling, Entertainment Weekly

"No other book I read this year combines such a distinctive prose style with truly thought-provoking content. Gladwell writes with a high degree of dazzle but at the same time remains as clear and direct as even Strunk or White could hope for."

―Atlanta Journal Constitution

About the Author

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers: The Tipping Point,Blink, Outliers,What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, an audio content company that produces the podcasts Revisionist History, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, and Broken Record, where he, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Headlam interview musicians across a wide range of genres. Gladwell has been included in the Time 100 Most Influential People list and touted as one of Foreign Policy'sTop Global Thinkers.

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Product details

ASIN : 0316017922
Publisher : Little, Brown and Company; Illustrated edition (18 November 2008)
Language : English
Hardcover : 320 pages
ISBN-10 : 9780316017923
ISBN-13 : 978-0316017923
Item Weight : 413 g
Dimensions : 13.97 x 2.54 x 21.08 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #56,053 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #82 in Statistics
- #159 in Communication & Social Skills (Books)
- #245 in Anthropology (Books)

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5 star		66%
4 star		22%
3 star		7%
2 star		2%
1 star		3%

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Balram

Voted #1 in the list of most mind expanding books by life hack.

Reviewed in India on 22 August 2016

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You will be convinced after completion of this book, that if Bill Gates was not born in 1950's he wouldn't be what he is now.This book reveals many ideas which completely change the way you look at people who succeed. The author explains that all those who succeed i.e., earn Name, Fame and Money, apart from being highly talented and hard working they also enjoyed the benefits of some arbitrary advantages which led to their success. Must Read.

45 people found this helpful

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Santhosh

Made me think. Nicely explained

Reviewed in India on 21 November 2018

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Got new thoughts after reading this book and has made me analyze my own life and the opportunities I got for whatever I am now. Completely agree with the fact that no one is born genius and only difference we ourselves can make to our success/failure is the decisions we make. Rest all comes as luck. Good and bad! My parents and family members always used to tell the same thing that, if I am made to clean cow dung, I will study well. Means, teach kids to work harder which in turn attracts good luck.

14 people found this helpful

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SAINATH REDDY

Story of success

Reviewed in India on 24 November 2019

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As success is overrated in contemporary world, this book caught my attention. After reading this book, I reminded of a line about success - "success has many fathers but failure is an orphan".
The author clearly explains the few reasons and their stories for a person to be successful and they are birth date, birth year, rules of the game, trends of the society, vigorous practice, family status, etc
It is a good book to read

7 people found this helpful

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Abhishek S.

Nice.

Reviewed in India on 5 June 2017

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Now I will look at super successful people in a different way. This book tells that no one succeeds by sheer talent. You need a little dose of good luck, here and there. Nicely explained with very good examples. It reminds me of The Secret book. It basically says that the harder you work, the luckier you will get.

21 people found this helpful

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Ganesan Thiru

Success is in mastering...

Reviewed in India on 9 August 2020

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Always thought successful person was gifted and that is how it was projected in movies as in one song the hero becomes rich and successful in Indian movies.

Outliers had broken all these myths. Understanding the grinding process followed by all successful people will make you to push you through all activities you are carrying on.

Bill gates was always said as richest man, but he worked hard for understanding programming language. Amazed by the great insights on each and every person.

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Hareesh Iyer

Readable

Reviewed in India on 19 December 2017

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Had huge expectation when I started this book. But it gave me a new experience. This book contains lots of stories, statistics. Gave me a new perception to look world events. Looks more like a compilation of research papers than a book. Writing is good. But it left me an emptiness that I have not learnt something largely as a revelation.

8 people found this helpful

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VAIBHAV

Not so Useful

Reviewed in India on 23 October 2019

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Delivered in good time. Content of book from first 150 pages is useful after that there is no any relationship between name of book and content. The book only try to justify success with "Luck" "Chance" instead of any fundamental advice.

3 people found this helpful

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Sri Harsha Akula

This books is a post-mortem report on Success

Reviewed in India on 12 April 2020

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The author, using thorough evidences, justifies that great achievements are by outstanding people (Outliers) are not JUST because of thier hardwork and industriousness. But is a result of ACCUMULATION OF VERIOUS favourable opportunities and inheritances, of course enhanced by the current generation's industriousness.

Anyone who is bewildered as to why their hard efforts are not making a greater impact and feeling low because of it, must read this book to understand how and when the impact of your efforts would take shape.

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Spectrum314k

Journalism and pseudoscience

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 November 2017

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Having read lots of favourable reviews, I was extremely disappointed. The book essentially argues against the notion that people are born to succeed. If you believe that success is a bit more complicated than that, you may be in for a tedious time ahead as it laboriously tries to convince you against something you never thought in the first place. There is simply not enough here for a book and so the material is stretched out, presenting points that would be common sense to most people seemly expecting the result to be paradigm shifting revelations to the reader. It circles around the same points approaching from a variety of angles, while ignoring any counter arguments you feel should be addressed.

Despite being reported as being "inspiring" (it's literally on the front page), it's hard to see why. The book argues the point that success can be largely attributed to a person's circumstances. As most of these are out with anyone's control e.g. the time of year you are born, I struggle to see how anyone could be inspired. The best I can imagine is that someone will feel better that they were not the next success because of factors beyond their control.

The book tries to make its point by cherry picking studies and examples that will help prove his point. I found one response from authors of a study stating that they thought that Gladwell had misinterpreted and oversimplified their findings and I strongly suspect they were not alone. It presents a series of anecdotes and hypotheses as to why a trend was observed. My issue is that these hypotheses, that are all in keeping with the central theme of the book, are presented as if they were facts, when they are anything but. There is no attempt to give a balanced discussion, exploring arguments, studies or examples not in keeping with the oversimplified central point. Let's be clear, this method of starting with a point you want to make and then working backwards finding "evidence" to prove your view is journalism, not science. Gladwell can dress it up as much as he likes with statistics and citations, but don't be fooled, this is not how anyone with any scientific credentials works. Within a few pages I realised I was not reading a book by an expert in the field attempting to make their work accessible to the public, this was written by someone who could write a good story, but had little or no understanding of the scientific method. The book reads like an extended magazine article, perhaps not surprisingly as I was later to find out that the author is indeed a magazine writer.

You will not learn how to be successful by reading this book. You will not be better informed about what makes someone successful. At best this is a thought piece with a few discussion points worthy of a conversation at your next dinner party and others may enjoy the idea that they could have been as successful as The Beatles or as rich as Bill Gates if they had just been in the right place at the right time. Just a shame that it's not true. I didn't enjoy this book but more than that, I was incensed by it. This is journalism. A pseudoscience stretched out magazine article masquerading as an evidence based insight into success written by a modern day snake oil salesman who has bought into his own hype.

165 people found this helpful

Stiven Skyrah

Salient and grounded

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 March 2018

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Gladwell argues that success is tightly married to opportunity and time on task. He states that it takes approximately 10,000 hours to master something and that gives me comfort. It helps me feel better about my many failures at initial attempts to master things (like glazing pottery, algebra, Salsa dancing, skiing and sewing... to name a few). I kept thinking, "I've just got to put in more hours if I want to do better."

While I can see a different way of spinning the data provided to support Gladwell's argument, I didn't care. In a rare moment, I found myself not wanting to argue. : ) Instead, I found myself reflecting on things that have felt like lucky opportunities in my own life. This reflection was very humbling.

Moreover, I felt the text tugging at the need for greater equity. What could all the people with limited opportunities do if given greater opportunities? Think Darfur. How many people who might have come up with the cure for pancreatic cancer been forced to spend their time standing in lines waiting for clean water or food?

My own personal experience as a teacher of refugees reflects Gladwell's primary thesis. Many of my refugee students are pre-literate. They have not been given the opportunity to gain a formal education. As a result, there are many well-intended, but misinformed people who place these students in special education courses or deem their I.Q. low, diminishing their opportunities even more.

The students I teach are hungry for skills and spend hours outside of class practising. They make huge gains despite earlier opportunities denied them. While many will not go on to big colleges out of high school, I feel like given enough opportunity and time they could make it there. Sadly, many have families who depend on them to work to help financially support the family. (Yet, another limited opportunity to spend time focused on developing skills.)

In the past week, I have shared Gladwell's thesis with my students. We have applied the 10,000 hours to master a task to reading and writing. I remind students that if we don't get our 10,000 hours this year together, they must continue on their own. I remind them that it IS possible to move forward if they are focused and keep adding hours of work to their reading and writing. We even write on the board how many hours left before we are masters.

"2 hours down, only 9,998 left to go."

Friday, I had a student from Somalia smile and ask, "So it's not true that white people are smarter than black Africans? They just get more chances to read?" Imagine my pleasure when I could respond, "YES! That's correct. You are just as smart as any white kid in this school. It's just that some of them have been reading for years and you are just getting started."

Thank you for your work Gladwell, it is salient in today's political conversation surrounding education (especially for our most vulnerable students who have been given the fewest opportunities).

34 people found this helpful

J C Mitchinson

Interesting enough but certainly no revelation

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 June 2014

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Basically, this book *reveals* that people don't gain success through talent and hard work alone; rather they have other, often hidden, advantages. These can be cultural, social, financial, and circumstantial. It also suggests that talent + advantages+ 10000 hours of practice = unusual success. This is demonstrated by a set of examples (The Beatles, Bill Gates etc).

Things I liked:

- Interesting to read the stories of how various people came to success

- Well written

- Somewhat vindicating for those of us who already knew the dice were loaded

Reservations:

- How is this a revelation? I felt a bit like this was written for people who are themselves pretty advantaged. If come from a lowly background, with little money or good social connections etc, you KNOW that these things disadvantage you, and you KNOW that those who get ahead, do so because of these advantages.

- There was no follow through. I was expecting (and hoping for) a "but if you don't have these advantages, you can still do X, Y & Z". But there was nothing. So if you aren't advantaged, you end up feeling a bit flat at the end.

Summary: Worth a read

107 people found this helpful

Marty M

Fascinating and thought-provoking

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 January 2019

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It takes a special insight to uncover truths that have always been there, but never been identified. Gladwell brings together evidence - and hindsight - to show how the most special of humans have been the product of their circumstances, opportunities and timing, which allied to hard work and talent makes people outliers. The lesson is that people can thrive only if given the opportunity and resources to do so, and in an oblique way is a damning critique of the winner-takes-all culture in Western societies, and the enormous inequities of inherited wealth and privilege.

7 people found this helpful

tallmanbaby

one great read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 September 2017

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At heart this is a cracking set of essays around the theme of achieving excellence, and despite the technical basis and dry subject it manages to read like a thriller. The author also flatters and draws in the reader with well chosen examples.

However, when you step back and think about it, despite the strength of the individual elements the book as a whole is probably not the game changer it sets out to be.

15 people found this helpful

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