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.