December 14th
Outliers
I just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s fairly disappointing Outliers.
The thesis in Outliers is that, in order to be successful in life, being lucky and being privileged matter. Nobody truly goes ‘from rags to riches’ — that every exceedingly successful person (Bill Gates, Bill Joy, etc.) was given a rare opportunity to achieve beyond their peers at some early stage in their lives.
As is typical of a Gladwell work, a point is introduced, and every chapter is dedicated to reiterating that point. No new ground is explored, just page after page of anecdotes to help drive the original argument home. Outliers strays from this presentation slightly by introducing disjointed musings throughout the majority of the book.
On the research front, there is very little original contribution. Mostly it’s just regurgitated statistics from a single study. I found myself wondering if several statistical correlations were just accidents, as no further comparisons were offered by Gladwell. Knowledge should be a synthesis of many studies.
I was also shocked to discover at least two Wikipedia references in the bibliography, as well as several Slate and Salon articles. While I’m a huge proponent of Wikipedia, using it as a basis for an argument is something that not even high school teachers allow. The entire biography of Bill Joy was based on a single Salon article. If I’m supposed to be convinced of something, I’d hope the writer would research a bit further than perusing a magazine article.
All in all, I give this book a 2 out of 5. It’s a perfect example of an exception to the Outlier rule (something not explored by Gladwell). It was published against all odds.
