Okay, so let me get this straight. If you were born right around January 1st, have 24-hour access to a fancy computer console, are sprung from Jewish parents who worked in the garment business in New York City, are Asian, practice for a diligent 10,000 hours on your hockey skillz, cut down on your summer vacations, harvest a rice paddy, study your math, and are willing to speak up if you're fairly sure that the Captain is crashing your airplane, then you, TOO, can be an Outlier.Success. Ah. How very sweet.
Julie Ritchey reviews this book in a much more articulate manner than I will be able to do, so I'll just provide you with this secret wormhole Internet link that will take you immediately to there:
http://yearofmagicalreading.blogspot.com/2008/12/outliers-by-malcolm-gladwell_20.html
I liked this book. Somewhere in the middle, amongst the talk of Jewish lawyers (although now I'm curious, Mom, do we come from a lineage of garment workers?) and angry Kentuckians, my interest started to wane. But then something told me that I should probably keep going, that I wouldn't be disappointed if I pushed on a bit. And then I reached the chapter entitled "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes" (truly amazing), and from that point on, this book rocked my world.
So, yes, I recommend it. Very compelling stuff, scary, inspiring. And in the end, you're left with a certain feeling of empowerment, that if you work hard, and are willing to make the changes to both your own life and to certain systems at large, then success isn't such an intangible thing after all.
5 comments:
You ought to read The Tipping Point. I once listened to it on a long car ride and I found Malcolm Gladwell to have an exceptionally soothing voice. But also a very insightful one.
OMG! Is that Mikey? Hi honey!
Andrew, Dad's grandfathers were both in garment businesses. Pop's father was a wholesaler of work and dress gloves and the other grandfather, Max, had several women's dress shops. (But what's that got to do with Jewish lawyers?)
Gladwell's newest book "What the Dog Saw" is supposed to be great also.
It's got EVERYTHING to do with Jewish lawyers. Everything.
I'm gonna give Mikey a big ol' "Amen" on this one. There are several bonuses to Malcolm Gladwell on audiobook. One is his exceptionally soothing voice. The other is that the subject matter he covers is extremely digestible in audio format; it's sort of like a 10 hour long episode of This American Life which, let's just be honest here, is pretty near to my idea of heaven.
And for Andy Lampl: TED Talk Fan, have you seen, Malcolm Gladwell's TED talk about spaghetti sauce? It's a winner to be sure.
That was a full disclosure answer, if ever I've seen one, Andrew!
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