Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

From The Week of August 01, 2010

Mr. Gladwell's work has received admiring praise from a public enchanted with his capacity to find nuggets of revealing information in a sea of social and economic data. But while Outliers is a credit to him and to his dogged research, I come away from the piece feeling as though I've spent a few hours with an overeager salesman. Mr. Gladwell tries too hard to convince us that his informational nuggets are the definitive answers to questions that may never be entirely solved. And whenever someone acts as though they have all the answers, I get suspicious. So let us enjoy this book, but perhaps it might go down easier with just a grain or two of salt.

In Outliers, Mr. Gladwell attempts to get at the heart of why some people are more successful in life than others. To help him research the question, he investigates successful bands (The Beetles), successful entrepreneurs (Bill Gates), and successful athletes (ice hockey players), sifting through the data to find a characteristic that distinguishes them from their many less successful contemporaries. In each case, and there are many cases made here by Mr. Gladwell, he unearths a common informational clue which he then uses to piece together a coherent argument for why this trait may be a conclusive determiner of success. These determiners are sometimes shockingly mundane, like an opportunity for extra practice. At other times, they are depressingly pre-determined, like year of birth. But in each case, Mr. Gladwell is able to lay down a logical, convincing framework for why this trait is the difference between mild success and extraordinary success.

Mr. Gladwell is a wonderful researcher, but his ability to take what he has learned and package it into a coherent narrative is the essence of his own success. His digressions into the roots of culture and industry not only edify, but they make the reader feel as though he's along for the ride of research with Mr. Gladwell, Watson to his Sherlock Holmes as he ties disparate bits together to create information and understanding where there was only noise and chaos. And yet Mr. Gladwell's clever narratives aren't without controversy. It's often clear that he is capitalizing on existing research, publicizing conclusions drawn from academic studies and using those conclusions to support his own theories. This is perfectly legal; it's even commendable for such research would surely cost him many late nights before the laptop, but it all begins to seem reminiscent of what Apple has done with the Iphone. Mr. Gladwell wraps his inimitable style around ideas that are already a matter of public record and, in doing so, produces a product that seems more revelatory than it actually is. The works at Apple are the masters of this kind of slick marketing.

Outliers is a fun, easy, and educational read, but does it advance human knowledge? I'm not so sure. It may go some way to explaining advantage, which is one of its goals, but it all has the feel of something best not pried into too deeply. (3/5 Stars)