My sister called me one day to tell me she was sending me a book by mail.  I got the book the very next day at around 11:30am.  I had completed three quarters of the book by the time I went to bed.  It has been years that I have had my hands on a book that read so quickly and was this compelling to read.  Before we get started with this review, I would like to flatly state that I most strongly recommend this book – it rocks!

When growing up, I would read biographies of famous people to see how they became successful.  Some of what I thought I knew is now dispelled after reading this book. This book rips apart, almost completely, what I thought makes people successful.  A lot of what I thought was truth appears to have been myth.

The book’s title is Outliers, The Story of Success.  The author is Malclom Gladwell who is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine.  He has been able to some how dig into some pretty unusual social science research and recognize how some pretty far out factors, that most of us would completely miss, actually are very important in making some individuals quite successful.  Some factors are out of anyone’s control such as the year and month someone is born. What is most reassuring is some factors are still within our control.  The author fails to promote those factors that we can utilize, but he does not have to, they become most apparent while reading the book.  Anyone reading Outliers will realize what is within their grasp for attaining success.

This book seems important way beyond personal interest and gain.  This book should be of value for education planners as it makes a strong case for year round schooling.  For sports teams, this book flatly states that the culling process for finding the best athletes, in many sports, is flawed.  The book also explains the probable gaining or lessening chances of death, might be dependent upon which national airline one chooses, if an in flight emergency occurs.  The book is full of very interesting stories that reveal success factors that are not apparent.  Most important, this book would be a very valuable read for parents of school aged children.  There is a lot of pertinent information, in this book, for helping mom and dad decide what is important  for their  child’s schooling.

The author’s writing style is set for a brisk pace.  He has a  clean wording structure style that allows the reader very few hills that might interrupt the fast reading flow.  Most important, the story structure is like being taken to a theme park where you are taken on short wonderful rides where you have absolutely no idea where you are going and where you will end up. This makes each ride quite exciting and one can not wait for the next new ride.  Do not pass this book up.