|  | Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
List Price: $27.99
Buy New: $9.99
as of 11/23/2009 14:59 CST details
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New (98) Used (53) Collectible (13) from $9.49
Seller: MaPlume
Rating:  788 reviews
Sales Rank: 35
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0316017922
Dewey Decimal Number: 302
EAN: 9780316017923
ASIN: 0316017922
Publication Date: November 18, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 11-15 of 788
Great compilation of stories, falls short of delivering what promisses on the title November 11, 2009
SG (Erie, PA)
I have just finished reading the book. After buying it without reading other reviews (out of the fear of spoilers) I read it rather quickly. I would like to start by saying this is an extremely entertaining book that ends leaving you wishing there would be more stories. But it delivers a compilation that falls short of fulfilling the "Story of Success" promisse of the title.
The author navigates through several cases where environmental factors, on top of talent, resulted in cases of success.
- more to come...
Intriguing November 10, 2009
Christopher C. Bailey
Gladwell writes convincingly and raises some intriguing ideas for discussion. We had a great time going through the rosters of most NHL teams to test his birthdate theory. While he veers slightly off topic in the last portion of the book, overall the examples he chooses to dissect are engaging and worth considering. A fun read!
 One Dimensional November 10, 2009
David M. Halley (Hong Kong)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
One dimensional, boring read
By the time you are half way through a chapter, you get it and just want to get it over with
Asian schooling so great? What about creativity and imagination? In summer holidays you learn to play. That is why the western world creates and eastern copies.
Vietnamese numbers? Wstern society would build a machine to do it for them.
Canadian hockey? That is an extreme example of one of few sports which are primarilly based on size.
Lawyers. Natural succession. old business ideas become obsolete all the time.
I could go on and on.........
 Outside the realm of the General body November 6, 2009
Golden Lion (North Ogden, Ut United States)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
The book "Outliers" had a very interesting section about conditioned violence and conflict between a few strange disputing groups. The violence was so intense that death or the potential of death is a small deterring factor. It seems weird these people were not afraid to die. The conflicting groups were oblivious to death. In one case, a boy was shot, near death, and as he approached, his mother; his mother told the boy too stop whining and act more like his brother, who previously died, at the same stop.
Intense and violent conflicts does not recognize legal authority. The groups are engaged in their own private war and play by their own rules. There is an environment of competition between the warring parties and the goal of winning.
In one case, a man appears in court and takes the gavel away from the judge and announces that there will be no court. The judge is forced to leave and returns with armed force.
Cultural pride helps in Escalation of the conflict. The culture of the group is inclined to become hostile over an insult and then escalate the insult into violence, a grass roots form of chivary. At first, causalities are high because the groups lack experience; large numbers of people are networked into the conflict; fighting spans many generations engaging both father and son; group experience takes time to accumulate, but as the groups become smarter and more experienced, the causalities decrease.
At times, the hostilities flare up and the violence leads produces many deaths. At other times the tensions cool down. At other times, the voice of reason is subjugated under the voice of competition and pride.
The conflicting groups are very different from the general body of people. Their behavior fits their belief system and it is inconsistent with general behavior.
The deviation from the general body causes severe skepticism, criticism, and lack of comprehension. The outlier seems special because of his ability and the elements that differentiate him from the group. Specialty includes hard work, opportunity, intelligence, and culture ethnicity. Specialty is not easily accepted by the group. The individuals with specialty do not get general group recognition and prosper quietly.
Wonderfully written, important topic, personal implications for everyone. November 6, 2009
Chris Edwards (San Deigo, CA USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a wonderful book.
I very much like Gladwell's writing style. Whatever he says, I feel like he's being reasonable and thoughtful. He is the opposite of someone like N. N. Taleb, the acerbic author of The Black Swan. Taleb advises humility by being haughty and condescending while Gladwell does so with introspection and humility himself. There is another similarity between these two authors where one did it wrong and the other got it right. Taleb used bizarre fictional scenarios to try to make his points with a flowery "literary" feel. In this book, Gladwell masterfully describes real situations in interesting, yet not overly dramatic ways to do the same. (It's hard to seem overly dramatic when commenting on the actual cockpit recordings of a plane destined to crash.)
This book was a pretty comfortable mix of information and presentation. He used real stories to try and paint a picture that went beyond just the statistical facts. He managed to do this without going into rambling editorials since he did have plenty of fascinating research findings to keep things accurate. At the end he did go into a vague territory that would seem unsubstantiatable by the record available to the public, however, since he was talking about his own family's personal stories, it was quite credible and interesting, and it gave his premise a personal aspect.
The main point of this book is, in my opinion, very important. It's also complicated. The nature of "success" is incredibly oversimplified in our normal existence, but Gladwell shows pretty well how that might be a big mistake. If having a lot of smart talented people doing clever, useful things is good, then surely as a society we'd jump at the chance to double that kind of productivity. I think there is a natural gravitation towards meritocracy, but it is much slower than it needs to be for our introspective species. This book shows why and how we might start to rethink how we plan for success. There is absolutely no moralizing in here, but the thoughtful reader will draw their own conclusions about all kinds of topics. It should put one's successes and failures in context. After reading this I was actually more hopeful that humans can work together to maximize success for us all.
Showing reviews 11-15 of 788
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