"Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell

For most of us, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who blend in with the rest and those who stand out. As it happens, in most cases those who stand out from the crowd and walk down their own path become quite successful, or at least notable people throughout their lifetime. Some people may refer to them as outliers of society, as Malcolm Gladwell did in his aptly-titled book Outliers: The Story of Success.

In his work, Gladwell looks into a number of highly talented, famous and successfully people who achieved their goals by walking the less-traveled path. Naturally, Malcolm doesn’t just chronicle the lives of these people as he seeks to answer a question: what makes them high-achievers, and how are they different from the rest of us?

As an answer to his own question, Gladwell proposes a very interesting idea: we are paying far too much attention to how these successful people talk and behave rather than where they came from. After all, a person’s culture, family and upbringing play a tremendous role in how they are going to end up in the future. In the end, Gladwell uses the information he learned in order to shed light on some of the most pressing mysteries of the present world, such as:

• How someone can become a multi-billion dollar software tycoon
• How one is to climb the ranks and become a world-famous soccer player
• Why most Asians are just so good at math,
• And most importantly, why the Beatles were one of the greatest rock bands on the face of the Earth.

All in all, Outliers makes for a light, entertaining, interesting and informative read that will have you smiling all while presenting a very interesting look at why life goes on the way it does for some people; it’s the perfect read for a rainy Sunday afternoon.

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Malcolm Gladwell Personal site Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist of Canadian origin, a bestselling author as well as a public speaker who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. All five of his books (five so far, anyways) have earned themselves a spot on The New York Times Best Seller list, with some of the more popular ones being The Tipping Point, Outliers and David and Goliath.