How do you define success? Malcolm Gladwell doesn't exactly do that in Outliers: The Story of Success. Instead, he provides oustanding examples of fame, money, smarts, and doing meaningful work as a loose representation of what success should be.
But his main point is to get you thinking about success in a whole new perspective. Gladwell covers a variety of topics from why the best athletes are born early in the year to the 10,000-hour rule used by serious musicians to the Jewish and the clothing business to Korea's pattern of plane crashes to Renee and the algebra software to KIPP to why Asians typically excel in math to the rice paddy approach.
There is no doubt that this book is interesting and gets your mind turning its wheels. Maybe it's true that without money, the right environment, talent, and hard work you won't be an outlier. Maybe it's true that just to be successful you need all these ingredients. But after you have taken the time to crunch some numbers, collect data, study statistics, and analyze your own trials with trying to get somewhere, is it really worth it? Yes, some outliers like Bill Joy and Bill Gates were able to become who they became partly because they were born at the right time. And it is really cool that Asians can excel at math partly because the language makes it easier to count numbers to begin with. However, you can define success differently and not live your life constantly analyzing others' lives and what worked for them, unless, of course, you, too want to be an outlier.
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