nix reviewed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Outliers' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
I don't think this book is 100% right, but I think it's very compelling and well worth the read.
Published Sept. 7, 2013 by Penguin, UK.
Outliers: The Story of Success
4 stars
(142 reviews)
In this stunning new 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.
Matthew Royal reviewed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Outliers' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
Exceptional humans are only exceptional because of the accident of their birth-circumstances giving them access to tools, education, and attitudes that make them exceptional. And 10k hours in anything makes you an expert. Therefore, successful people deserve their success because success only happens through the merits of hard work applied for a long time. In fact, success is inevitable given enough time doing something, and the confidence to assert yourself, and the social background of successful parents.
Largely, Gladwell's thesis has low predictive value, so I suspect it's overfitting to his examples. If anything, it's a meditation on the contradictory pre-conditions for success. Gristle for thought with low nutritional value.
lijadora reviewed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Outliers' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I expected this book to be entertaining only (Gladwell is a good story teller). Anything more would be a bonus.
I was not disappointed. I even read interesting claims, backed by some research and 'anecdotal evidence'.
Fionnáin reviewed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Outliers' on 'GoodReads'
3 stars
As a big fan of Gladwell's podcast I looked forward to this book eagerly. the early sections do what he does best - tie together data and theory to form a coherent picture of outlier events and why there is always an amount of luck involved in achievement. However, the book has flaws, even in the early sections, such as the lack of comparative analysis and the use of selective statistics. Overall, I loved the premise, the sentiment and most of the writing but felt the weaknesses let the book down.
Cam reviewed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Outliers' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
A solid and interesting book with a great idea on the nature of success. I felt like I didn't get the whole story most of the time, but the conclusions were still true.
Jiří Eischmann reviewed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Outliers' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
A brilliant book. A lot of interesting facts, connections, and opinions.
Ikwezi reviewed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Outliers' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Probably my favorite of Gladwell's oeuvre, but surprising amounts of filler for a book so short
Mark Anderson reviewed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Outliers' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Gladwell is succinct and persuasive here in his argument that success and talent have less to do with individual personality and effort and more to do with where and when and within what context one happens to be born. I think his argument is convincing, as I think it dovetails quite powerfully with Jared Diamond's environmental resources = cultural advantage argument in "Guns, Germs, and Steel."
chrisamaphone reviewed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Outliers' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
Gladwell's storytelling almost compels me to believe his thesis. This book is a lot of fun, but I think worth taking with a dose of salt.
Renaclerican reviewed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Outliers' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
A book with a great start that unfortunately ends with a fallacious conclusion.
At the end of the ninth chapter, the author asserts that there would be twice as many hockey players if we had two cut off dates. This is ridiculous. It would of course mitigate the bias of age (i.e. what month you are born would not have such a big impact on getting selected). At best we would have marginally better players (though it is quite possible that some other arbitrary cutoff would replace the old one). There can be only so many NHL teams and therefore so many professional players.
He also asks, what if a million teenagers had access to the same advantages as Bill Gates, how many Microsoft would we have today? Well, it's quite obvious from his own argument that if so many had the same advantages, Bill would simply no longer be …
A book with a great start that unfortunately ends with a fallacious conclusion.
At the end of the ninth chapter, the author asserts that there would be twice as many hockey players if we had two cut off dates. This is ridiculous. It would of course mitigate the bias of age (i.e. what month you are born would not have such a big impact on getting selected). At best we would have marginally better players (though it is quite possible that some other arbitrary cutoff would replace the old one). There can be only so many NHL teams and therefore so many professional players.
He also asks, what if a million teenagers had access to the same advantages as Bill Gates, how many Microsoft would we have today? Well, it's quite obvious from his own argument that if so many had the same advantages, Bill would simply no longer be an outlier, and there would probably be no Microsoft. (This is not necessarily a bad thing, the combined contributions to society from these teenagers might be greater than those of Microsoft, a company with dubious achievements).
Ultimately the biggest let down is that this book frustratingly refuses to address the subject of inequality. If outliers are, basically, those who got lucky among those who were capable, then what implication does this have for social policy? Is it reasonable that these outliers amass extraordinary amounts of wealth when fundamentally their contributions are the result of chance (not exclusively, of course. Outliers are all hard working individuals, my point here is about the difference in renumeration compared to other similar yet not as lucky individuals). Tyrants are outliers as well. And we could do without them.
Pentapod reviewed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Outliers' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Gladwell has the talent of making even potentially very dry data and research sound interesting. Although I liked his first two books better, this one is no exception.
Gladwell looks at our society's popular beliefs about success and those who succeed, and questions the assumptions that you probably didn't even realize you're making. Although he does cherry pick his examples to fit his points, he nonetheless raises some very interesting and thought-provoking ideas.
Wagburger reviewed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Outliers' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
'there is no substitute for time on task'.
Fascinating, first Adobe eBook, which seems an appropriate way to scan a TED Lecture celeb.
Jonathan Arnold reviewed Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Review of 'Outliers' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Here's what I wrote earlier. I have to admit to the more I think and talk about the book, the less I think of it. It all seems too superficial.
A pretty interesting book, albeit with not quite as many "knock me over with a feather" moments as [b:Blink|40102|Blink|Malcolm Gladwell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255630010s/40102.jpg|1180927]. It starts off with a bang, as he discusses amateur hockey teams and how it was noticed that virtually all the players on an Under-18 hockey team came from the first three months of the year. Turns out the age cutoff is January 1 in Canada, so the older players (those born early in the year) advanced further due to their slight maturity advantage which continued to multiply, as they got better training, put on better teams etc.
This subject hits close to home, as I am a soccer coach and heavily involved in my daughter's soccer league. My oldest …
Here's what I wrote earlier. I have to admit to the more I think and talk about the book, the less I think of it. It all seems too superficial.
A pretty interesting book, albeit with not quite as many "knock me over with a feather" moments as [b:Blink|40102|Blink|Malcolm Gladwell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255630010s/40102.jpg|1180927]. It starts off with a bang, as he discusses amateur hockey teams and how it was noticed that virtually all the players on an Under-18 hockey team came from the first three months of the year. Turns out the age cutoff is January 1 in Canada, so the older players (those born early in the year) advanced further due to their slight maturity advantage which continued to multiply, as they got better training, put on better teams etc.
This subject hits close to home, as I am a soccer coach and heavily involved in my daughter's soccer league. My oldest has a birthday at the worst possible time, just a few weeks before the cutoff date, while the younger one has a birthday the month after the cutoff date. So far, it hasn't seemed to slow the older one's progress, but it is something I will certainly keep an eye on. Gladwell's suggestion is to have multiple cutoff dates, so other ages can play against others of the same age. Doesn't seem likely though.
He also explores how the timing of your interests can really change things. Something as simple as how available computer time was to early pioneers like Bill Gates and Bill Joy. Certainly, in the late 60s and early 70s, the amount of keyboard time these guys had pales in comparison to what would be available just a few years before that. He also talks about a major law firm in New York that benefited from getting the kinds of financial cases the other law firms wouldn't deal with, only to explode in popularity as the money days of the 80s and 90s struck.
I thought the book felt like it suffered from data mining, in that there didn't seem to be enough exploration of other equally successful groups that may not have had the same advantages. But still a fascinating look at what kinds of thing influence success, whether we think about them or not.
