book review of outliers by malcolm gladwell

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Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell: Book Summary & Review

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"Outliers" takes us into the world of successful people, and unexpectedly reveals a series of amazing statistical results: most Premier League players were born between September and November;

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were both born in 1955; the founders of many famous New York law firms are descendants of Jews, and most of their ancestors made a living in the New York clothing industry.

Why is this happening? The reason is that the registration time for Premier League players is September every year.

Among players of the same age, those born in September are almost one year older than those born in August.

The one-year difference had a huge impact on their careers; around 1955 was the computer revolution period.

Those who were born too early could not have personal computers, and those who were born too late had the opportunity of the computer revolution taken by others... Therefore, those geniuses and outliers have to thank the favor of opportunity.

In addition, their success also requires the cultural influence of the previous generation and is closely related to cultural inheritance.

The eccentric Gladwell tells us that without opportunities, culture, and environmental factors, even if your IQ exceeds that of Einstein, you can only do a mediocre job.

"Outliers" leads us to find the root of success, discover deeper opportunities for success, and also bring new inspiration for social change .

Book: Outliers: The Story of Success

Outliers: The Story of Success is a non-fiction book written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown, and Company on November 18, 2008. In Outliers, Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. Wikipedia

Originally published: November 18, 2008
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Genre: A self-help book
Title: Outliers: The Story of Success amazon.com
Cover artist: Allison J. Warner
Dewey Decimal: 302 22

Outliers : The Story of Success

Excerpts from the original text

About the author: malcolm gladwell, book analysis.

Book Summary

Book Review

IQ is to success what height is to basketball. Within a certain height, the higher the better, but after a certain line, no matter how high it is, it may not be good.
The biggest advantage of children from wealthy and middle-class families is their strong practical intelligence: from elementary school, how can they have equal conversations with authorities, take the initiative to ask questions, make jokes, and control the situation.
This is why Oppenheimer's crisis (gossip: this person tried to murder his mentor when he was a graduate student) can be resolved through negotiation. Family origin is so important.
One of the major discoveries of this book is that the year and date of birth determine the destiny of a person, and the phenomenon of crowd theory is discovered.
The second part of this book talks about the impact of environment and culture on a person.

Study Guide:

Opportunity number one was that Gates got set to Lakeside. How many high schools in the world had access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968?
Opportunity number two was that the mothers of Lakeside had enough money to pay for the school's computer fees.
Number three was that, when that money ran out, one of the parents happened to work at C-Cubed, which happened to need someone to check its code on the weekends, and also happened not to care if weekends turned into weeknights.
Number four was that Gates just happened to find out about ISI, and ISI happened to need someone to work on its payroll software.
Number five was that Gates happened to live within walking distance of the University of Washington.
Number six was that the university happened to have free computer time between three and six in the morning.
Number seven was that REW happened to call Bud Pembroke.
Number eight was that the best programmers Pembroke knew for that particular problem happened to be two high school kids. and
Number nine was that Lakeside was willing to let those kids spend their spring term miles away, writing code.

“There was C-Cubed and the payroll stuff we did. The TRW—all those things came together. I had a better exposure to software development at a young age than I think anyone did in that period of time, and all because of an incredibly lucky series of events."

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Outliers Summary

1-Sentence-Summary: Outliers explains why “the self-made man” is a myth and what truly lies behind the success of the best people in their field, which is often a series of lucky events, rare opportunities and other external factors, which are out of our control.

Favorite quote from the author:

Table of Contents

Video Summary

Outliers review, audio summary, who would i recommend the outliers summary to.

The only thing I knew about Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers , was that this is the book that the 10,000 hour rule came from. The rule says to become world-class at anything, you have to put in 10,000 hours of practice, which equals to about 5 years of uninterrupted 40-hour workweeks worth of practice. In reality, it’s often closer to 10 years.

Therefore, I expected the book to be about deliberate practice and how success is in your own hands , if you work hard enough. Boy, was I wrong. The book argues the exact opposite.

Here is a summary of Outliers in just 3 lessons:

After you cross a certain skill threshold, your abilities won’t help you.
The month you’re born in matters.
Asians are good at math, because where you come from matters.

Let’s see what it takes to be an outlier!

If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.

Lesson 1: After you cross a certain skill threshold, your abilities won’t help you.

To debunk the myth of the “self-made man”, which might be the most popular myth of our time, Gladwell first looked at how much your skills really influence where you end up in life.

Of course practice matters, and so do genetic predispositions in sports, but there are limits to their influence. As it turns out, once you cross a certain threshold with your skills and abilities, any extra won’t do you much good .

For example, since the 1980s, the average height of an NBA basketball player has been 6′ 7″ . Even if you grow to be 7′ tall, those additional inches won’t give you a huge advantage over other players.

Gladwell also looked at law school students and their performance. Some law schools lower their admission requirements for racial minorities, and even though these students tend to perform worse than their non-minority peers both before and in law school, this gap completely disappears once they graduate .

They make the same valuable contributions, get paid just as much and receive as many honors as their peers. Why?

Because once you’ve reached a certain level of legal expertise, other factors start to take over and influence your career, like social skills, how good your network is, and even catching a lucky break.

Lesson 2: Being born in the wrong month can put you at a disadvantage.

Remember when you saw an 8th grader in high school date a 10th grader? You were probably shocked! “He’s 2 years older than her, that’s insane!” – I still remember the comments, it was a huge deal in our school.

However, when you’re 40 and take your wife to dinner with the neighbors, nobody would be surprised to hear she’s 38, 42, or even several more years older or younger than you.

That’s because relative age matters, especially when you’re young. How old you are compared to your peers can give you a huge advantage or disadvantage, for example in sports.

Gladwell found out that most professional Canadian hockey players, who end up in the NHL, are born in the first half of the year. In fact, twice as many have birthdays in the first quarter as in the last .

That’s because the annual cutoff date for youth teams is January 1st, meaning kids born in December have to compete with their friends who are almost a year older than they are. When you’re 8 years old, you stand no chance against a 9 year old in terms of strength and speed – the difference is huge when a year makes up 12.5% of your entire life.

Think through your own life, and you’ll see this happens all the time. I too suffered from this problem in school!

Lesson 3: Asians are good at math, because where you come from matters.

If you think age is bad, try imagining being born somewhere entirely different . Warren Buffett always says he’s been lucky to have been born into the United States at the time he was , because a few thousand years ago, with his kinds of genes, he’d have been some animal’s lunch.

For example, Gladwell says there’s a reason for the stereotype that “Asians are good at math.” Several factors actually are in favor of Asians becoming relatively good at it.

First, Asian languages are set up so that children learn to add numbers simultaneously with learning to count. Second, hundreds of years of building a traditional culture around farming rice has instilled a great sense of discipline into Asian culture.

Unlike farming wheat or corn, farming rice is hard. It needs a lot more precision, control, coordination and patience. Rice farmers could also reap the full rewards of their work, whereas European farmers were often robbed of a big part of their harvest by greedy landlords and nobility, leaving them far less motivated to do their best.

Just like rice farming, math is hard. You have to stick with problems and let the gears in your brain crunch until you work it out. Europeans often give up a lot faster on hard math questions than their Asian peers, because neither math nor discipline are a part of their cultural legacy.

So yes, where you’re born matters .

I loved The Tipping Point , and I expect Outliers to be just as awesome. I’m really glad I read the summary first. Now, I’m even more interested in it than before. It is refreshing to hear some counter-arguments to the “self-made man” myth. I hope you enjoyed our brief book summary of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. This one’s definitely worth your time.

Listen to the audio of this summary with a free reading.fm account:

The 21-year-old with a weakness for motivational talks, who’s sure if he just keeps working hard every day, he’ll eventually get his dream, the 38-year-old Mum, who’s worried her child might get bullied in school for being younger, and anyone who thinks Asians are good at math is a stupid cliché.

Last Updated on July 28, 2022

Niklas Göke

Niklas Göke is an author and writer whose work has attracted tens of millions of readers to date. He is also the founder and CEO of Four Minute Books, a collection of over 1,000 free book summaries teaching readers 3 valuable lessons in just 4 minutes each. Born and raised in Germany, Nik also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration & Engineering from KIT Karlsruhe and a Master’s Degree in Management & Technology from the Technical University of Munich. He lives in Munich and enjoys a great slice of salami pizza almost as much as reading — or writing — the next book — or book summary, of course!

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