‘Outliers’ Shows the Influence of Circumstance of Success

Not often do I have time to finish a book outside the course load of a regular semester, but I just managed to finish a book I began at the end of summer in the odd few minutes before bedtime. The book was Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers: The Story of Success” (Little, Brown and Company, 2008).

I rarely choose a nonfiction book to read for fun, apart from historical works. I definitely do not read books that sound or look like “self-help” books, because in general I think their authors just churn them out to capitalize on the population’s yearning for self-respect. “Outliers” does not fit precisely into the latter category, but instead gives an overview of the author’s statistical research in the area of success determinations.

Gladwell begins with an examination of the elite Canadian youth hockey team. He shows, through statistical analysis, that those boys who were born at just the right time (just past the cut-off date) could join a hockey team as an older first-year member with more practice and ability, as well as greater size. This had an impact on their selection for varsity teams almost from the beginning, and varsity selection meant more practice time, which led to greater ability.

The book includes studies in a variety of other fields, situating various personalities in the conditions that were suitable or unsuitable for their development into a successful individual. For example, the author explains Bill Gates’s unusual positioning at the cusp of the software boom and tells how his unique opportunitie to gain training hours in the programming field led to his success.

By contrast, he also details the trying circumstances of the person commonly regarded as the “smartest man in the world” (he has the highest recorded IQ score, anyway) but who has failed to make an impact on the academic world because he lacks certain validations from society.

Essentially, Gladwell concludes that one can only attribute some small part of success to good genes and an awesome IQ score. Repeatedly, he shows that success is instead attributable to circumstances. The recognition of this phenomenon could encourage people to change the conditions of others whom they wish to succeed.

“Outliers” is well-researched and thought-provoking. Occasionally the author lapses into an annoyingly “dumbed-down” pedagogical tone, probably to appeal to more readers. On the whole, however, it has an engaging style and successfully draws in the reader.
Malcolm Gladwell is the author of two other #1 New York Times best sellers: “The Tipping Point” and “Blink.” He earned a history degree at the University of Toronto, served as a business and science reporter at the Washington Post and currently is on staff at The New Yorker.