Outliers: The Story Of Success, By Malcolm Gladwell

In the book “Outliers: The Story of Success” authored by Malcolm Gladwell, he explains what an outlier is and what it means to be “successful”. Throughout the novel, Gladwell provides examples by writing different stories in nine various chapters to support his claim. Gladwell believes that success isn’t gained by natural talent, but by the effects of other circumstances and that these people are called outliers. It’s the argument of nature vs. nurture that Gladwell wants to address in his book. Many people in society would think that a particular person is successful due to the individual’s natural talents, although that can be true to a certain extent, Gladwell wants to disapprove that idea in people’s mind and wants the public to look at

Natural talent doesn’t lead the person to success, but it’s the combination of nurturing and favorable events that will make the him/her “successful”. Gladwell wrote nine chapters, each with an unique story and lesson behind it and each will try to make the reader believe towards his belief of why someone is “successful”. In Gladwell’s very first chapter of the novel, he goes into hockey players and what gave many of the players in the league today a head start over their competition. A huge percentage of players in league are born in the first four months(Jan.,Feb.,March,and April) of the year and only a small percentage are born

According to Gladwell, Langan was extremely brilliant, “In school, Langan could walk into a test in a foreign-language class, not having studied at all...he could skim through the textbook and ace the test.”(71). He had an IQ of one ninety-five, which compared to Albert Einstein who had only a IQ of one fifty is quite an enormous difference. Even from the early youth, Langan was smart and could pass any test in any academic subjects by skimming through the textbook once. Not only in academics was he talented in but, also in drawings and guitar playing as well. As stated in the book “Without a degree, Langan floundered… He worked on a sprawling treatise he calls the “CTMU”... But without academic credentials, he despairs of ever getting published in a scholarly journal”(95). Langan seemed that he would be a multimillionaire in spite of his high intelligence and ability to perform, however he ended up not obtaining a college degree resulting into working middle class jobs. During the time Langan was not in school, he would continue his studies and tried to publish journals about his finding but since he did not have a degree, he could not publish them. Due to unfortunate events such as his mother not sending the scholarship at all, his teachers at Reed and Montana State were not sympathetic towards him in anyway possible so Langan could not finish school and get a college