The Pandemonium Of The Sun

I was hugely impressed with Malcolm Gladwell’s two previous books, The Tipping Point and Blink. He had a great way of explaining things that should be common sense, but aren’t necessarily so. Outliers: The Story of Success continues in that fine tradition, explaining why success isn’t always the product of hard work, but is just as likely a product of being in the right place at the right time. For example, many of the founders of the largest computer companies were born in the space of a couple of years. Did they work hard? Sure. Gladwell indentifies the 10,000 hour mark as a measure of mastery. Whether you are a violinist, a novelist, or a computer programmer, if you keep at it for 10,000 hours you will become world class. But Gladwell identifies that it was when they were born that led them to have access to computer labs just when computers were becoming accessible on college campuses. My biggest quibble with Gladwell’s earlier books was his over-summarization of the topics at hand. Every few pages he would summarize, and then summarize again at the end of the chapter, and them, finally, at the beginning of the next chapter, take a look at what he went over in the last chapter. Outliers tampers that down a bit, making for a more enjoyable read.