Outliers

Fans of The Tipping Point and Blink can celebrate. Malcom Gladwell published a new book. In his latest opus, Outliers, Mr. Gladwell sets out to "unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't". He asks what separates Bill Gates, Robert Oppenheimer, and Wayne Gretsky from the rest of us? Like all his works, Outliers is readable and thought provoking, with a good mix of anecdotes and statistics. But at the end, the logic of who succeeds and who doesn't is still raveled.

The hypothesis of Outliers is that successful people are born to certain advantages that less successful people lack. Many of the advantages that Gladwell uncovers in his case studies are surprising. Among them: being born between January and March, being born in the 1830's, being born in the early 1930's, being born in the mid-1950's, having a job that requires lots of hours, coming from a privileged background, coming from a middle class background, growing up in a neighborhood close to universities or technology companies, knowing how to get along with people, being the victim of anti-Semitism (can this really be called an "advantage"?), having ancestors who traded garments, and having ancestors who grew rice. The book is worth reading, just to learn how these things are connected to worldly achievement.

The trouble is that millions of people share these advantages but never triumph over mediocrity. They grow up next door to Bill Gates but don't start Microsoft. They are as smart as charming as Robert Oppenheimer but don't invent the atomic bomb. Mr. Gladwell never shows why these people, who also got a leg up, never hit the big time. In other words, he confuses necessary with sufficient cause. The Logic Critic gives Malcom Gladwell…

2 Blades - Wrong.