Critical Analysis Of Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell

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In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell (2008) tells a series of stories of success and concludes his discoveries of underlying secrets in success. Gladwell divides his book into two parts: opportunity and legacy. For the first part “opportunity,” Gladwell explains that individual talent is necessary but not sufficient to achieve success because accessible opportunities matter a lot to one’s success. As to the second part “legacy,” Gladwell emphasizes the significance of cultural legacy and the historical advantages that can’t be ignored when considering the factors of success. Although some critics argue that Gladwell uses stereotypical examples, Outliers is a convincing book because its merits outweigh the defects.
Gladwell sets his goal in chapter one “The Matthew Effect” that he wants to make readers understand success profoundly and …show more content…

He has a good sense of writing as he makes research interesting, attracting readers to keep reading. To illustrate his opinions, Gladwell uses various evidences: Einstein Evidence, Example Evidence, Fact Evidence and Undocumented Evidence. Those evidences make his statements strong and convincing. For example, Gladwell writes the story of the ethnic theory of the Korean plane crashes happened before 1999. Without Gladwell’s discovery, how many people can relate a country’s cultural legacy with its plane crash? Gladwell doesn’t show his discovery directly, instead, he starts by telling a real story of Korean Air flight 801 which turns out to be a disaster. Next, he lists a series of plane crashes that have one thing in common─all of these disasters are happened on Korean airplanes. Gladwell patiently waits the moment when readers become curious, and then he jumps out to give the explanations. This makes his viewpoint impressive to readers and also instructive to future researcher because Gladwell’s discoveries are based on the real historical

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