Review
'You will never again think as you did before about [success] ... This book deserves the gold star that adorns its front cover.' -- A. C. Grayling, The Times
Review
'Gladwell deploys a wealth of fascinating data and information to illustrate his thesis ... Outliers challenges accepted wisdom.'
Review
'Malcolm Gladwell is a cerebral and jaunty writer, with an unusual gift for making the complex seem simple'
Review
'A fizzingly entertaining and enlightening book'
Book Description
'...this book is an excellent reading experience. It will make you feel happy'
Observer
'A global phenomenon, one of the most brilliant and influential writers of his generation ... there is, it sometimes seems, no subject over which Gladwell cannot scatter some magic dust ... he has a genius for making everything he writes seem like an impossible adventure'
The Times
'His inspiring, revelatory attempt to look at the qualities that aren't mentioned enough in a culture of individualism ... he is the best kind of writer - the kind who makes you feel like you're a genius, rather than that he's a genius'
Guardian
'Gladwell is not only a brilliant storyteller; he can see what those stories tell us, the lessons they contain ... and Gladwell shows that it can be immense fun'
Evening Standard
'An exceptionally well-written book ... like a 90,000 word essay by Geroge Orwell, with a bit of help from Jonathan Kellerman ... I wanted to cheer or clap ... Outliers is perhaps the ultimate Gladwell book'
Product Description
A brilliant new book from the bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Blink
Why are people successful? For centuries, humankind has grappled with this question, searching for the secret to accomplishing great things. In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an invigorating intellectual journey to show us what makes an extreme overachiever.
He reveals that we pay far too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where successful people are from: their culture, their family, and their generation. Gladwell examines how the careers of Bill Gates and the performance of world-class football players are alike; what top fighter pilots and The Beatles have in common; why so many top lawyers are Jewish; why Asians are good at maths; and why it is correct to say that the mathematician who solved Fermat's Theorem is not a genius.
Just as he did in Blink, Gladwell overturns many of our conventional notions and creates an entirely new model for seeing the world. Brilliant and entertaining, this is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.
About the Author
Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer with
The New Yorker magazine since 1996. In 2005 he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. He is the author of two books,
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference (2000) and
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), both of which were number one New York Times bestsellers.
