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Outliers: The Story of Success about 1 year ago

grade 11 assignment, review outliers, :(

Gladwell Re-writes History, Again…

A review by Rachel Turner 

Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success is a book that can simultaneously evoke deep thought while becoming somewhat tiresome during reading. Outliers is a book about why people are so successful, and why people aren’t and why they are so disciplined and how to achieve success; but no, this is no self help book. While reading this book for a school assignment, I found what many people have built to be a revolutionary new way of thinking is just compiling other people’s theories into one format that makes them seem fluid. As you may have been able to detect by now, I am not a big fan of the book. I cannot say there were no interesting facts in the book, there were, but none were really his findings. If I were to sum up the entire piece of work in a few words it would be interesting statistics and stories compiled into one. The actual content was decent, yet the constantly looming fact that this Gladwell is made to be very original was a little bothersome to say the least. The books main goal is to describe why people are so successful and share interesting stories about successful and not so successful people. The book discusses people are successful mostly because of luck, like when your birthday was can make you a great hockey player and lucky breaks are the only way you can be successful. However, he then continues to mention that it is NOT just luck that makes you successful, it is also hard work. Funny, who would have thought? Gladwell claims you need to practice something for 10,000 hours to be successful at it. Another point he makes which I liked because I did not find it to be contradictable is why Asians seem to be better at math. Malcolm Gladwell says that their number system is far more efficient than our when it comes to calculating problems. In the last few chapters Gladwell talks about people who make rice patties being very disciplined, not very exciting if you ask me. So, this book did not entertain me at all. I feel it did not live up to the hype. At first was actually excited to read it as it looked interesting to me. Sadly, it fell short, very short. The main reason I did not like it is because even if an author uses someone else’s theories, they should add something fresh to it and I do not feel in the slightest that Gladwell did so. I did like how Gladwell defined the term outlier; I surely did not know what it was before, but again by the end I felt everyone is an outlier. I like how he thought of pointing out some facts people may overlook, but again, nothing new. The final issue I have with the book is its purpose, it claims not to be a self help book (and it is not) and it is not a revolutionary piece of literature, so what is it? I am going to say a time waster and I good doctor’s office read. Simply, this book had a lot of content with very little meaning. My opinion in a nutshell? I encourage you to read this; yes, you heard me. I may sound hypocritical here, but I am sort of a Debbie downer, so I say go for it, read it, do not devote your time to it however. Just skim through it, pick up some interesting tidbits. What you shouldn’t do with this book? Buy it. It does not have enough staying power to entertain anyone over and over again, trust me. If you’re looking for a self help book, try Mark Hyman or Wayne W. Dwyer. If you’re looking for revolutionary, try Ian Rankin. Just do not expect too much from Mr. Gladwell. In conclusion, Outliers just was not my type of book, period. For others, I can see where the entertainment would be present, if you’re a Gladwell fan even more so. Having read his previous works I can say they follow a sort of dull pattern, not too appealing to the masses, but give it a go if you would like!