Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

About the book:

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

My Review:

I received this book audiobook from Anna Balasi with Hachette Book Group. This is the first audiobook that I had listened to in a very long time, and boy was I glad that I started with this one. To be honest, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect when I started listening to it.

I found this book to be fascinating! Although some of the things he talks about may seem like common knowledge, for instance the fact that if you look at some of the best in their field and corelate that with the amount of time they spent to get there, you will see something very similar. The best musicians, The Beatles included, owe their success to the amount of time they spent practicing. While this may seem like a "duh" moment, the way the author brings these facts to light is new and innovative. It really makes you think.

There are many aspects of this book that I enjoyed, but quite possibly my favorite was the section on the hockey players and birth order. It actually had me looking on the internet to check birthdates of the "best" hockey players that ever played the game (by the way, Wayne Gretzky was born on January 26).

Truly a thought provoking book and one I would highly recommend!

About the author:

Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for The New Yorker. He was formerly a business and science reporter at the Washington Post.