Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell is a non-fiction novel that uses vignettes to break down and reveal the unsung advantages of successful people in their upbringing. The novel describes specific underlying details about masters of their craft that allowed them to become the highly regarded people we see them as today. Gladwell argues the time of year of birth, location of birth, and more all provide logical benefits to these fortunate people. While specific ideas in this novel are disregarded and almost ludicrous, Gladwell provides a peculiar yet compelling explanation on each of these points that puzzled me but allowed me to realize the substantial effect minute details have in our lives. To me, it was a perplexing yet fascinating book that I recommend to those who want to know the secrets to become great in their respective pursuits. It taught me that not all legends we know today simply outworked their peers and became what we know them as today. Almost all of them have several underlying advantages we can’t see. It questions how the upbringing of these individuals aside from what we can see on the surface affected these human beings for the better. The novel makes the readers question the advantages they have and how it affects their own probabilities of success given their circumstances. In doing so, the novel attests to our own perception of the advantages or disadvantages we have in our lives. It is practical and unexpectedly logical in ways that allow us to realize how unfair competing with others that have these advantages can be. Likewise, it suggests the hidden disadvantages people may have sustained without realizing it. Using statistics and simply seeing how certain advantages can be found within virtually all of these successful people, I agree with Gladwell’s opinion on how these people thrived based on other things aside from putting in the man hours. I advise anyone looking to read it to fully understand the basis and reasoning behind everything Gladwell brings up. But all in all, for anyone who wants to read a provocative book that will challenge the way you perceive the best of the best, Outliers: The Story of Success is the novel for you.
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