Outliers

The Story of Success

By: Malcolm Gladwell

Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell

Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

From the best-selling author of The Bomber Mafia, learn what sets high achievers apart - from Bill Gates to the Beatles - in this seminal work from "a singular talent" (New York Times Book Review).

In this stunning audiobook, 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.

©2008 Malcom Gladwell (P)2008 Hachette Audio

Engaging, but overrated

Outliers has many interesting statistical anecdotes sprinkled throughout, to be sure. My interest was held. But at its core, the book's central theme is simply "successful people are aided in their success by their families, culture, education and other chance factors. They could not have done it alone." This is not exactly a particularly profound revelation. Gladwell repeatedly asserts that most people think Bill Gates-type successes are simply due to that person's raw talent and little else. But is that really the case? Does anybody really think Bill Gates could have achieved what he did had he been born in Botswana, for example? What's more, while crediting these outside factors with making these "outliers" possible, he fails to note that in almost every case, hundreds if not thousands or even more other people had virtually identical birth situations, yet failed to achieve greatness. Gladwell's goal seems to be an attempt to take the shine off of society's great success stories by, in effect, claiming they just got lucky. But I think the formula for producing an outlier is more complex than that. Too often in this book, Gladwell seems to be profoundly stating the obvious.
Gladwell's narration of his own work is generally skillful and an easy listen.

Captivating (if not an outlier)

Regardless of what you ultimately think of the author's analysis, Gladwell is a masterful storyteller, weaving together interesting anecdotes from such diverse sources as plane crash research to hillbilly feuds to standardized math tests. That Gladwell narrates the audio book himself adds greatly to the listening experience. Critics will complain that his thesis is obvious (that opportunity, cultural inheritence and hard work play key roles in success), or that his examples are selective and ignore in turn outliers that don't illustrate his points -- or, somewhat inconsistently, both. But Gladwell's books are successful because he examines phenomena and topics of importance in an accessible and entertaining way. No one should mistake Malcolm Gladwell for a big thinker like, say, Stephen J. Gould, but Gladwell would be the first one to tell you that he's no outlier. Don't accept everything the author says as truth revealed, but do listen to this book -- it's one of the best non-fiction offerings available through Audible.

Interesting

This was a pretty interesting book. I don't agree with all of the reasoning, but it's an interesting theory.

The one downside to this book is that if you're looking for motivation, it might work the opposite effect.

This book is about how luck and certain circumstances make you more likely to be successful such as your birthdate, ethnicity, and religion.

If you easily see your circumstances as beyond your control, you may read this book and feel disheartened that you're not lucky or have the right circumstances to be successful.

I believe luck is part of it, but drive and ambition are also important too. You DO have the power to alter your circumstances, even if you've not been given special advantages.

This book should be called 'selective evidence'

Whilst a lot of the ideas in this book are not Gladwell's alone, he takes responsibility for presenting them as if they were fact. Some parts are fascinating - such as the investigation of pilot errors which lead to crashes - but much of it falls woefully short of sound argument. The main points in the book are either obvious or highly questionable: intelligence alone is no trigger for success; luck is big factor in all great achievements; 10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve excellence at anything.

The examples he provides completely ignore the possibility that timing is not just luck, but actually a inherent quality of the thought process that goes into the idea of the business in the first place. Did Bill Gates really become so successful purely because he was: a) in the right place at the right time, and b) put in 10,000 hours of programming in an age when computers were hard to come by? By drawing these conclusions he overlooks the unprovable possibility that Gates may have become successful in another area had he not been born at the right time to start Microsoft.

Were the Beatles successful because of their 10,000 hours of practice in German nightclubs and the like before their 'breakthrough' US number one? Even if you ignore Gladwell's convenient use of their US breakthrough to mark his 10,000 hour cut-off (coming 18 months after their UK success), were they really successful because of the amount of practice they put in? Was it merely musical competence that raised them above their peers? What about inspiration, creative ideas, charisma, chemistry or pure unteachable songwriting genius? And what about the likes of Nick Drake, or Kurt Cobain, or Buddy Holly? They could not have possibly put in the 10,000 hours 'required' practice as prescribed by Gladwell. There must be hundreds or thousands more in the world of music, film, literature, or even business who do not conform to the 10,000 hour rule. Yet they are conveniently overlooked.

Not Really About Outliers.

This books title leads you to believe that it's going to talk about statistical outliers, but it only nominally does that. Gladwell ignores actual outliers in the teeth of the statistical cases he presents.

One of the earliest examples he uses of "Outliers" are individuals in Canadian hockey teams. Because individuals are filtered into teams by their birthdates, the players with earlier birthdays, in January or February for example, have a year of growth ahead of those in the same league with birthdays in December or November, and therefore they are advantaged over those players every single year through school and on up into professional hockey. These players get more advantages because they continue to outperform the others, which causes them to get more advantages, which causes them to continue to outperform the others, ad infinitum. The result? There are a supermajority of professional Canadian hockey players with early birthdays, and a minority with late ones. So far, so good.

He then goes on to say that those with the early birthdays are the outliers that go on to achieve Hockey success later in life. But these only seem like outliers if you consider them against the majority of humans that aren't professional hockey players and never would be. In reality, statistically, the minority of players with birthdays in October through December that nevertheless reach professional status in Hockey and succeed ARE the real Outliers in his sample! They represent a minority but must be truly outstanding individuals, or at least more outstanding than those who succeeded merely because of their fortunate position and nominally superior maturity. These people would be interesting to learn about. He ignores them in his analysis. It's not even clear whether he knows the problem of their existence presents a problem for his thesis.

I wanted to read a book about statistical outliers -- truly outstanding people and what makes them up. Instead, Gladwell conveniently ignores many truly remarkable individuals in his quest to explain away accomplishments that have been reached through privileged position or status.

Intriguing but the research is questionable

This book is quite intriguing, but often as I listened I began to wonder about his research methodology. His facts, while compelling seem to be only part of the picture and I began to wonder as to how much picking and choosing of facts was going on to support his points. His determination to support his rather deterministic view is clear throughout the piece.

Excellent book; well adapted for the audio format

Unusual take on a topic that is taken for granted. The author's voice enhances the message-highly recommended audiobook-perhaps my best book of the year!

not drinking the cool-aid

I just did not find this book that compelling, much less convincing. The author is a master at taking a series of observations and making a circumstantial case for a point, but then never critically assessing whether his assertions are correct by looking at them in some objective manner. The hypothesis is that there are random but predictable factors control our fate. So here is the problem. It is easy to look retrospectively and say, Bill gates is who he is because someone bought a computer for his 8th grade class which gave him a unique opportunity. So if that purchase was the key for bill, what happened to all his classmates and why don't we know anything about them. Another hypothesis is that its really the extent to which you practise that determines your outcome, so really successful musicians are there because they practiced more over the years. Umm, but what led them to practise so much more at an early age? The author acts like he has solved the nature vs. nurture; argument, but it is not so simple. Then ther is the statements that once you reach a certain basic level of height for basketball players or intelligence for the rest of us, that additional height or intelligence does not matter. Umm, why do BB players get measured to the millimeter at pre-NBA draft camps, and why does their stock fall if a player is found to only be 6-6, instead of 6-8, and why are there so many slow relatively clumsy 7-0 white guys sitting on rosters if height above 6-2 does not matter.

Overall, I felt the entire time like a jedi master was trying to fool me with a mind trick. This is a nice book written to sell, not to really investigate or study an issue in any scientific or significant manner. Once you start poking holes in his arguments, it makes listening to him more and more painful, although the audio quality is good.

Don’t dilute your potential with this book

This book’s entire theme is basically that chance determines your successes in life. Hard work, preserverence, determination, commitment and resilience are qualities that this book does not celebrate. Instead, it focuses on culture, upbringing, date of birth and chance. If you are looking for self improvement, I would highly recommend skipping this title and reading books like “The secret of the ages” by Robert Collier, “The power of your subconscious mind” by dr Joseph Murphy, “The richest man in Babylon” by George S. Clason etc.

PLEASE READ THIS BOOK!

This book is a must read for every educator, administrator, politician, or parent.

In "Outliers", Malcolm Gladwell writes a compelling book that everyone in anyway connected to the education of our children needs to read.

For too long, education has been stagnant; floundering in a system that continues to cling to outdated policies and practices. Through out this book, Gladwell provides solid reasons for restructuring while pointing out concrete changes that if made could provide higher levels of success for many more student than the current system provides.

It is NOT about haves or have nots. We all have, but we are not all given the opportunities needed to succeed. Our education system has got to change.

Just so stories

Mr Gladwell has a nice voice and is a natural storyteller, but unfortunately he cannot think straight for an extended period (such as a book). He contradicts himself: at one point, to succeed you need the 'right', well connected, parents (high IQ elementary kids) at another point the key to success (for New York lawyers in the 1970s) is to be born on the wrong side of the tracks (jewish immigrant). He has extraordinarily low standards of 'proof': having demonstrated that certain successes (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates etc.) got lucky breaks, he then breezily states, 'Now we have shown that circumstances are actually more important than raw talent'. I find this very irritating. The main thesis seems to be 'you need luck as well as talent'. Duh?? Is that a thesis or a statement of the bloody obvious? The three stars is because, despite all this, Outliers is quite listenable. It is so low powered and well read that you never need to hit the repeat button, which is handy if your hands are muddy (as mine usually are when I'm audioing).

I never thought about it that way...

As a teacher I have spent years praising kids for being smart, then, however,they rely on that to wing the exams. now I praise them for the amount of hard work they do to achieve their goals and they do better.

Inspiring book, well read, and it has application outside its covers.

Mark from Enfield

Riveting - enjoyed it much more than the paperback

Malcolm Gladwell is a terrific writer; he's also an experienced and effective presenter. So when he's reading his own material it's a compelling package and I was totally hooked.
He's dug up some fascinating statistics to back up his overall hypothesis: when someone is exceptional at something it's not just a case of luck or hard work.
IT millionaires all born in the same 3-year period; high performers who all put in more than 10,000 hours of practice; entrepreneurs whose experience of being immigrants influenced who they knew and what they did - and many more fascinating examples.
I'll definitely be listening to this again.

Very engaging

Its one of those books you can't stop listening to. I do feel however there isn't many ways to apply this to your life.

Amusing stories of success from a different view

This book is really well read by the author. The viewpoint he provides on how some people have got where they are challenges the idea that we are products of ourselves. He sets out to prove this point with a series of cases, each of which is entertaining to consider, but is by no means an exhaustive list. As such his argument is interesting and worth considering, but not rigorously examined.

Interesting, engaging and very informative

If you've read Freakonomics, then you'll love this. Malcolm Gladwell delves deep into the reasons and circumstances around what makes some people more successful than others. The people and groups he highlights will surprise you - but more so you'll be amazed at what things had to align for them to reach that point of success. Easy to listen to, simply stated but very engaging it was hard to pause while listening on my commute to work.

Full of repetitive facts and stories

I cannot stop talking about this book. It is so interesting it just makes you pass on the knowledge but with vigour.

round in circle

What did you like best about Outliers? What did you like least?

Never seem to get to the real point of the book in any concise way.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Never seem to get to the real point and title of the book in any concise way.

Have you listened to any of Malcolm Gladwell’s other performances? How does this one compare?

no

If this book were a film would you go see it?

no it would not work.. good documentary thou

Any additional comments?

seem like self centred philosophy for his life rather than a completely thought through work. Some very interesting sections about how chance plays so much of a role in life, and why some people do better in certain fields, but can't real say that as well rounded Englishman I feel any way enlightened by this book. If I lived in a bubble, may be...

Great listen

Fascinating book with lovely insights into the development of so-called Outliers. Well read by the author. If the subject matter piques your interest, it is worth the time listening.

Absolutely mindblowing!

A truly thought provoking book. I Have to listen to it again! Highly recommended book