OUTLIERS: THE STORY OF SUCCESS

At my last job, I spent five years editing young-adult biographies of scientists, politicians, business leaders, inventors, explorers, and other high achievers, and I couldn’t help but notice an eerie similarity among their life stories: they all seemed to have enjoyed extraordinary strokes of chance, coincidence, and good luck (those little frissions of “It almost didn’t happen!” were always one of my favorite things about reading history). Studying so many remarkable lives made me realize that the old saw is really true: a lot of success comes from just showing up and being in the right place at the right time (of course, when the time comes, it helps if you’re smart and talented). (This was illustrated for me in another way by working with the authors who wrote for that publisher—they weren’t always the most talented writers, but they were the ones who were out there hustling, working hard, doing their research, sending us their ideas, and cranking out manuscripts; for a first job out of college, that was a good lesson to learn.) This fascinating book (Malcolm Gladwell’s books are always like catnip to me; I’m all, “Yes, please, tell me more about the results of that sociological experiment! Ooh, and this neurological research!”) bore out my casual observation with study after study suggesting that the factors that create success may be more complex than most people realize—for instance, it really is possible to be born at the right time, whether you’re a Canadian youth hockey player or a nineteenth-century industrialist; and practice (10,000 hours of it) really does make perfect, whether you’re Bill Gates or a Beatle. I realize there are flaws in Gladwell’s logic (he tends to be anecdotal and oversimplifies things at times, so I understand why some people think he’s overrated), but maybe because it tapped into my previous musings on biography, I found this book pretty thrilling.