I just finished up the audio version of Malcolm Gladwell's recent book, Outliers, and I found it really interesting. I can see why Gladwell's current book has been taken with some controversy, he basically tries to debunk the hard work and toil, rags to riches success will pay scenarios that is a mantra to many, and a particularly familiar one to Americans... it is his theory that success is as much part luck as it is hard work.
The book is a collection of really interesting stories, to me they're stories that are plausible and fascinating, and they kept my interest. Nothing truly surprised me (well one thing did, a statistic that I mention later), but a lot of things made say, "huh, that sort of makes sense." I think it's up to the reader to take it at face value or not.
I was particularly struck by the fun connections Gladwell made to birthdays and success. I even found myself relating with the connection that children held back a year from starting school do better than children who start school right away... My birthday falling in September made me one of those children when my education began, and I was not in the category of children held back a year, making me the youngest in my class. I always wondered why two of my good friends, both in a class below me and weeks older than I was were particularly smarter, honor students, and one Salutatorian of his class. A lot of my friends are smart, I never felt jealous of this situation, I was pretty well aware of my strengths at a young age and recognizing I didn't have have to be intelligent at everything happened to be one of them... to me then it was still an interesting curiosity, and now it sort of makes sense, they were just given a different opportunity than I was. I was also shocked to discover that only 11% of children in my category, the children who are not held a year, even attend college, something I had done, which puts me in this small group of college graduates that I was never aware existed. Being the youngest in my class was a struggle, school in general was a struggle for me, and always has been, and neither one of these things were ever overlooked by me... I suppose I just never made the connections between them. I do know other situations certainly make up for any disadvantages I may have been handed by being the youngest in my class, and that some combination of this and some combination of other things make me who I am, and somebody I've always been proud to be. It doesn't make me better off or worse off, it's just like little puzzle pieces that fall into place, you feel better having some insight you didn't have before.
The other story I was interested in was the opening on cultural heritage and the settlers of Kentucky. This fascinated me mostly because the lineage followed very closely to my own. My father's side of the family migrated from the British Isles then to Virginia and settled in Kentucky about the same time. I'm not sure if they were caught up in any of the feuding mentioned in the book (but now I'm fascinated to know for sure!) but it definitely gave me a different perspective of what life might have been like for my family and my own cultural heritage. The point in the book is that these settlers have a cultural legacy of honor that even today is intrinsically followed by those living in the South, despite modern circumstances. Now of course one branch of my father's family migrated north, to Toledo, starting with my Great Grandfather as well as my Great Grandmother, so I did not grow up in the South, but I wonder how much of that culture of honor is present in me, or how growing up in the North shaped it differently. I do find these things quite fascinating to think about!
The stories in the book are success stories told in a way you don't hear the stories told, and for me at least they made me think (of course two of which did hit particularly close to personal experience so that could've had a lot of reason for that). I did enjoy the audio book version of this one, it was read by Malcolm Gladwell and there was also a small interview at the end of the book. This book won't give you any answers about success, I'm not sure that's what it sets out to do, but it might make you think about it differently than you did before.
