OUTLIERS Malcolm Gladwell

       What is it that makes a person successful? And when I say "successful" I don't mean leaving RCA linking arms with someone with their own teeth on a Saturday night.
       I'm talking about tangible achievements that inevitably lead to riches. The kind of success that makes people like Microsoft's Bill Gates, prominent US lawyer Joe Flom or Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy "outliers"- men and women who, according to Malcolm Gladwell,"For one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August."
       Is it hard work? Intelligence? Ambition? Yes, says Gladwell. It's all these things. But it's also so much more. Gladwell argues that we have a crude way of looking at how people achieve. He says that we are far too focused on the individual. That nobody makes it alone.
       To understand an outlier we must look at their culture and the community around them. Are Asians really better than Caucasians at maths, and if so why? Gladwell argues that the stereotype is true and can be explained by cultural reasons ranging from language to a history of farming rice.
       Does the culture of a country directly relate to the safety record of its national airline? Again, yes - and Gladwell explains why.
       Using empirical evidence, the author demonstrates that one of the conditions for success is often as simple as the date a person is born professional athletes like footballers and ice hockey players are more often than not the oldest kids in their school year. Success also comes from opportunity - the young Bill Gates got the chance to programme computers thanks to some extraordinary luck, for example.
       Outliers will change the way you think about success and quite possibly make you feel a lot better about yourself if you haven't yet achieved it.