Essay On Outliers By George Gladwell

After reading the book, one of the main problem with the book is its use of the word ‘outliers’ to refer to exceptional people, individuals who achieve so much more than others. It should instead refer to the exceptional circumstances that allowed them their meteoric rise to success. These factors such as year and era of birth, family background, race and place of education contain the quirks of fate that allow the merely talented to achieve the successes that lie so far outside the norm. This is one Gladwell’s major thesis.
Gladwell’s target is the traditional American story of success: rugged individuals, by dint of hard work and raw talent, perspiration and inspiration, achieve those magnificent success levels that elude others. Instead, Gladwell wants to show the place of circumstances and situation in this story. He wants to give success a context beyond that of one man and his willpower
The book is one, big collection of counter-cultural stories about the nature of specifically American success. (By ‘counter-cultural’ I mean contrary to the ‘rugged individual’ myth described above.) This story-method is Gladwell’s greatest strength or weakness, depending of what you’re looking for, as for me i wanted to read something fascinating, provocative, and launch-pad like. That’s exactly what I got.

Throughout the book Gladwell does flag up a couple of possibilities. He just doesn’t do too much with them, that’s all. That is what frustrated me the most with the book.
For instance, he spends some time taking the IQ industry to task. He points out some examples of people with incredibly high IQ levels who haven’t made been successful. So far, so trite. Gladwell sexes up this observation by juicy piece of compare and contrast (chapter 4). In one corner, entre Chris Langan, in IQ terms a genius, but in success terms a