Gladwell proves throughout the book why we should abandon our false belief that successful people did it all alone. He demonstrates that their successes are a perfect storm of ability, community, and opportunity, and even some luck. Gladwell candidly examines the most successful people we all know – Bill Gates and the Beatles were among many others. The book Outliers is about success, but once again, in a way that you wouldn’t expect.

There were very smooth transitions throughout the book from concept-to-concept and between each case study. Any stumble or stammer I attribute to my poor eyesight and the bumpy road. I read most of the book aloud to my parents on car rides while on vacation, and there were virtually no hiccups in the writing. This was just one of the reasons I found the writing to be incredibly skillful. I refuse to ruin it for you, but you too will see what I mean. He uses this technique to explain why the best hockey players have similar birthdays, or to explain the reason for most plane crashes. That happened many times while reading Outliers. Gladwell does an amazing job of introducing the reader to a subject you think you know, and then artfully revealing something you didn’t expect. There’s so much richness in Gladwell’s work that my overview only scratches the surface! If you’re worried about spoilers, don’t be. But more than that, I really like to dig into the substance and the major takeaways (I’ll get into those later). In my book reviews, I like to analyze the writing – how clearly and interestingly concepts are conveyed. I didn’t realize how much until I started reading Malcolm Gladwell’s books.

Outliers gladwell