Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

By far this is the best of the three Malcolm Gladwell books I have read (see The Tipping Point and Blink). I read this while on the vacation I mentioned last week. I actually read the entire book in a day. What can I say...we were at the beach. I don't think I've ever done this before, but I am going to recite the back of the book as it perfectly describes the book (fair use):

In understanding successful people, we have come to focus far too much on their intelligence and ambition and personality traits. Instead, Malcolm Gladwell argues in Outliers, we should look at the world that surrounds the successful - their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way, Gladwell reveals what the Beatles and Bill Gates have in common, the reason you've never heard of the smartest man in the world, why almost no star hockey players are born in the fall, and why, when it comes to plane crashes, where the pilots are born matters as much as how well they are trained.

I found the book to be extremely insightful. Maybe smarter people have already heard about some of the examples in the book. Obviously everyone has heard of the Beatles and Bill Gates, but do you know their background? Understanding what they went through and where they came from makes you realize success was inevitable.

I thought the second half of the book could be misconstrued as stereotyping or racist. The author makes a lot of statements about different cultures and races, but a lot of what he said was simply pointing out facts and making connections. I didn't find any of it offensive. In fact, I thought it provided a great segway to the conclusion of the book. The final chapter tied together the whole book together (not the chapter about his mom, but the chapter about KIPP).

Almost positive this will end up on my top 5 at the end of the year. I cannot wait to read Malcolm Gladwell's next book, David and Goliath, due out October 1st of this year.

My rating for Outliers: 5 stars out of 5. Get it here!

P.S. At some point, I'm going to make a list of my favorite authors. Malcolm Gladwell would definitely be on the list. This goes back to the question I posed last week...should I blog random topics when I don't have a book to review?

P.S.S I've added an "Upcoming Releases" page, which you can access by clicking the link on the right side of the page. Basically keeping track of upcoming books so I don't forget!