Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (2008, Hardcover)

Malcolm Gladwell has become an influential public educator by examining the obvious. In Outliers- successful people who stand out from the rest of the crowd- he posits that where a person comes from matters, whether you are Bill Gates or the Beatles. His gift as a writer is to look for answers in the wisdom and research of experts, academics, kooks- ouliers all.

The lesson of Outliers is this: Successful people are not successful by accident. They are the product of will and determination, and of forces beyond their control: ancestry, parenting, community and....dumb luck. He argues that practice is an important part of success- a minimum of 10,000 hours, no matter what the specialty.

Gladwell's broader assertion is that there are no real outliers. Successes, he writes, "are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and disadvantages, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky- but all critical to making them who they are." In other words, if it's not something, it's another. Life is a crapshoot. Each person is special.

Gladwell manages to make these pedestian observations interesting, somehow, and anyone who has read his previous books will find this one just as instructive.