Outliers: The Story of Success
Product Details | Similar Products | Customer Reviews | Author: Malcolm Gladwell List Price: $27.99 Our Price: $11.74 You Save: $16.25 (58%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours  |
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 | Product Details: Hardcover 309 pages Release Date: 18 November 2008 Publisher: Little, Brown and Company ISBN: 0316017922 Rating:   Sales Rank: 37 | | Look for similar books by subject: | | Customers who bought this item also bought:
| | Customer Reviews: Gladwell has woven together an exceedingly interesting story. (12 March 2010)Outliers: The Story of Success Review by Richard L. Weaver II, PhD. In his 320-page book (only 180 of text according to one reviewer's estimate), Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell, a professional writer, has woven together an exceedingly interesting story. He is a terrific writer, a fact well illustrated in both Blink and The Tipping Point. His thesis is that to be successful in life, upbringing, culture, luck, and privilege matter. He debunks the myth that high intelligence or where you were educated are of concern. Success has everything to do with "practical intelligence," along with your willingness to put in the 10,000 hours of practice required to reach mastery in your field. The information related to "practical intelligence" can be found in Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence (a book I highly recommend). If you aren't familiar with some of Gladwell's ideas or topics, you will find this book a good introduction or starting point. If you're looking for a book that includes original research, deep analysis, or the support of other writers and thinkers on the topic (e.g., opinions, quotations, testimony, or references), this is not the book for you because Gladwell is not a social scientist, nor is he a journalist or deep thinker. However, if its a light, fluffy read to which you are attracted, this might be a good choice. Excellent book. (11 March 2010)I learned a great deal from reading this book. I teach business and economics at the university level. I will definitely use some of the material in this book in my freshman university lectures. Really interesting literature (11 March 2010)A great book that will make you think. Entertaining and inspiring at the same time On Outliers (10 March 2010)I'm still not completely sold on Gladwell's shtick, but I do love his anecdotes. In this book he attempts to trace success to environmental and cultural factors, and does quite a good job. Gladwell looks at oddities such as professional Canadian hockey players and their overwhelming tendency to be born in the first three months of the year. Why? Because at a very young age January 1st is the cutoff date and at that age the older kids have a significant size advantage. Since these bigger kids are selected for the better teams they go on to get better and more training as they progress through adolescence. Essentially, Canada is leaving out a large number of potential pro hockey players due to this early selection process. One of the more fascinating chapters in the book addresses why Asians are better at math than everyone else. Gladwell asserts that the reasoning for this is cultural and linguistically-based, I will just give a summary of the linguistic side. In Cantonese, for example, numbers take only 1/4 of a second to pronounce, but in English most numbers take 1/3 of a second to pronounce. Thus the average Cantonese speaker can handily remember ten numbers while the English speaker cannot. (we usually can absorb six or seven, hence telephone numbers). In English, our number system is not intuitive and does not make a whole lot of logical sense. We use a suffix on the numbers 13-19, and then when we get to twenty we use a prefix. In Cantonese, twenty-five would be something like "two ten five," which is much more systematic than logical than "twenty-five." Because of these differences young children in Asian-speaking countries can often count up to 40, whereas their American counterparts can only reach 15. Essentially we're a full year behind and in a critical development period. Gladwell also goes on to trace math skills back to Eastern versus Western farming techniques, but I won't spoil that for you. One criticism of this book I've heard is that Gladwell places too much emphasis for success on environmental factors. He does talk heavily about environmental factors, but he also never fails to state that hard work and determination by the individual is key to success. Recommendation: While Outliers isn't going to win you success, it's certainly an interesting look at the causes and factors that lead to success in our world. developing a new worldview (10 March 2010)gladwell destroys the concept of inherent abilities. as a black man this is important because we have been told for 400 years that we are genetically inferior in intelligence. Gladwell's study indicates that the intelligence factor plays far less a role than many other factors such as time spent on a skill, education, and one's cultural environment. his work is going to have a tremendous effect on the education of children. it will also lead many parents to place more emphasis on intervening in their children's development, especially in having them learn special skills at an early age. we know that tiger woods began playing golf as a toddler. parents will begin taking this concept more seriously than before. black parents will also begin to understand the relationship of culture to their worldview and resultant behavior, especially what they are teaching their children on a subliminal level. it is very critical reading for those of us who live in the black communities of america. this book will spawn tremendous activity and research.many more books will be written because of it. | |
