Outliers: The Story of Success Review

Ebook, 309 Pages
Non-Fiction/ Self Help/ Business
By: Malcolm Gladwell
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟 1/2

“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”

This year I have achieved my goal of reading at least 12 non-fiction books and I picked books that mostly talk about business, entrepreneurship and success! It is amusing how different authors interpreted success; some see it as the power of believing in something and it will happen as in the law of attraction. Some think you have to work but that you need to have some unfair advantages and Gladwell in this book also makes his own arguments and at the end of the day we just have to remember that all of these are arguments and we should make our own opinions and beliefs and that we are not obliged to take each and every word for granted!

This book has more than half a million ratings and an average rating of 4.16 at the time of writing this which is a very high rating! I enjoyed the book but I expected a bit more to be honest! Gladwell knows how to make a good argument and he does provide data and evidence to support his writing which I think is cool. The problem is that I found the writing to be a bit chaotic and cluttered, sometimes jumping back and forth many times before making the point clear!

The topics that the author chosen were mostly interesting but some of them were more interesting than the others, I found the Korean Airline chapter to be boring to be honest and it was one of the longest chapters in the book! Also, despite the author providing data and evidence, I found it to be a bit biased. I think if someone can do a bit of research then some of the topics won’t be as realistic as Gladwell makes them sound. The author mentions that older students tend to get more attention and be more successful, as the class valedictorian and one of the youngest students at the same time, I find it hard to believe! Furthermore, when I went into med school at 17, I found that many students were also the youngest in their classes back in high school, so I can just interpret this data as younger students tend to be smarter and more likely to go into medicine school which I don’t think is true!

“Achievement is talent plus preparation”

Summary: I can see why is this such a successful book because of the intriguing way it provides data and arguments! I believe that it was interesting and that I took some things of the book but once again, I think it is important to make our own opinions after reading books of these kind and to take the chance to think more and be provoked!