Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell is a great book that made me think after I finished about my own outliers. An outlier is described as a scientific term to describe things or a phenomena that lies outside normal experience as described by Gladwell. The book is smart but written so simple, that it is easy to follow. I was blown away how easy Gladwell will break down a person’s history in a couple of paragraphs. The topics are broken down and planned out really well. If and when I read nonfiction, I usually read a biography, so it was a treat for me to be so throughly entertained by this book. I read this book in two days, part one that is a little over half the book I could not put down. The second part about legacy wasn’t as good but still intriguing.

The Plot: The book shows you that outliers exist by using examples of hereditary, when you were born, if you grew up around self made people, if you had the time to find sucess, and the date you were born. Gladwell shows that if you want to be a professional hockey player you should be born from January through March for an added advantage. The advantage is December 31 is the cut off for Allstar league. So everybody born in January – March will be the most physically developed. Which plays into Gladwell showing evidence of people working 10,000 hours in an area to gain success, he shows how this worked for The Beatles, Bill Gates, and other people in their field. You will see that one’s intelligence has a limit for success when you include other factors. You will spend time with the smartest college drop out ever in Chris Langan. Will get answer why Asians have an advantage in math, why Korean airlines used to have the most plane crashes, and why it was an advantage to be Jewish to be a Lawyer in the 1960’s.

What I Liked: This book was so easy to read and flowed so well for most of it. Gladwell breakdown the lives of over a hundred people in this book, it’s all interesting and the histories allowed me to paint such a vivid picture in my mind. I came away thinking about mine and my family’s outliers for success, it had that self help aspect where I can think and plan stuff for my own kid’s future. The 10,000 hours to success is brilliant, and the highlight of the book. That chapter I can see myself reading again in future. I’m from the South and I liked the experiment that was performed on aggression in Southerners compared to Northerners.

What I Disliked: The airport disasters chapter went on for too long, and we kept coming back to one crash in particular that was over analyzed to death, I did think it was interesting but I got the point and was ready to move on 30 pages ago. The second part of the book did not flow as well as the first.

Recommendations: I recommend you check this book out. It’s great for anecdotes at parties, some great conversational pieces. You can wow your friends with this question and answer that is asked to potential Microsoft employees during an interview; Why are manhole covers round? And so many other great bits. I rated Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell 4 out of 5 stars. I will totally read another piece of nonfiction work by Malcolm Gladwell