Outliers: The story of success (Gladwell)

Malcolm Gladwell is gifted. He, of course, would argue with me. He might tell me that he's spent more time preparing to write and writing than some people spend sleeping. He'd say that his cultural and familial background (as well as multitudinous opportunity and favourable circumstance) shoved him into his chosen profession at a time when his brilliance could be best leveraged for success. He'd suggest that what I call 'a gift' he calls 'expertise fostered by the right background and plenty of experience.' He'd insist that I not attribute his excellence the the wrong quirks of fate. Quirks of fate there may have been, but they are not the ones I imply with my uninformed choice of wording.

Fine. Starting over then: Malcolm Gladwell is excellent as a writer and as a thinker. His book Outliers is a monument to his skills in both areas. I love how the book is arranged. I love the titles and subtitles at the beginning of each chapter, I love how Gladwell uses italics, I love the crackle behind his writing. What is more, I fully approve of the way he uses exclamation marks. I am difficult to please concerning exclamation marks. He has probably received loftier accolades, but I take this minute victory as evidence that he is remarkable in many ways, including the small ones that count precisely because of their triviality. Gladwell gets everything right. Everything.

Well, mercy me. All this gushing, and I haven't yet mentioned the contents of Gladwell's masterwork.

So what's this book about? The subtitle claims it is "the story of success." It's an unimpressive description. Bookstores are packed to the cobwebs with works claiming to contain the secrets to riches, health, beauty, happiness, and a devoted clientele. This is not another book about positive thinking or self management. Instead Gladwell explains that:

• remarkable ability is the reliable product of a given number of hours in practice
• a high IQ does not guarantee success, particularly where there is a lack of practical intelligence
• practical intelligence, far from being innate, is a skill best transmitted by a particular approach to parenting called "concerted cultivation"
• meaningful work is the best way to both competence and happiness
• plane crash incident rate per country corresponds with that country's Power Distance Index and the accompanying changes in communication across a status gradient, and from this we can conclude that
• where you come from dictates the norms and expectations you will have absorbed, and therefore proscribes the situations in which you will succeed unless
• you recognize how your traditions are messing with you and take steps to change them, in which case, no problems
• Asians are our mathematical superiors because their language and rice paddies conspire to make them that way
• the previous point is actually valid for reasons which require a chapter's worth of explication - which he kindly provides
• children can be really smart if their schooling consumes all of their waking hours six days a week
• a twelve hour work week is within your grasp if you are willing to move to the Kalahari desert to hunt and gather with the !Kung bushmen
• his awesome hair comes to him legitimately, through tribal African ancestry

Outliers is about absolutely everything, as it might pertain to remarkable (and even unremarkable) accomplishments. So it seems to me, but that is because I am dazzled. While Gladwell's subject matter is wildly diverse and unpredictable, Outliers is deliciously coherent. Hockey players, Jamaican slaves, commercial airline pilots, Chinese peasantry, geniuses, trigger happy Southerners, and Jewish lawyers gather in precise array to answer a well defined question. You can find the organizing theme of Gladwell's book in a single paragraph from the middle of the first chapter:

"Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And, most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play - and by "we" I mean society - in determining who makes it and who doesn't."