Genre: Nonfiction
Length: 309 pages
Audiobook Length: 7 hours and 18 minutes
First Published: 2008
View in Goodreads
Buy on Amazon
Publisher’s Description
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers”–the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?
His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Quotes from Outliers
Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.
It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success… Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.
Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from.
Hard work is only a prison sentence when you lack motivation
We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don’t matter at all.
About Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell is the author of seven books – The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, The Bomber Mafia, What the Dog Saw, David and Goliath and Talking to Strangers. He is the co-founder of the audio content company Pushkin Industries which produces the podcasts Revisionist History and Broken Record. Visit the author’s website →
Featured In
