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blairconrad 's review for:
Outliers: The Story of Success
by Malcolm Gladwell
Probably a better work than either [b:The Tipping Point|2612|The Tipping Point|Malcolm Gladwell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255576535s/2612.jpg|2124255] or [b:Blink|40102|Blink|Malcolm Gladwell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255630010s/40102.jpg|1180927]. Well-written, and entertaining, but not without its flaws. One of the big problems is that Gladwell seems to fall into the classic blunder of thinking that the plural of “anecdote” is “data”.
In a few places his assertions about factors that influence people’s success are backed up by science, but in many cases it’s not clear that they are. One will often find instances of “hey, look at these 3 Jewish families – there are lots of siblings who are doctors and lawyers, so being Jewish during a certain period in New York increases the likelihood that your kids will be professionals”. Now, maybe that’s the case. Unfortunately, it’s not the sort of thing that can be determined by looking at a handful of examples, and Gladwell never makes it clear to the reader that any more rigorous analysis was performed.
That being said, the book was fun to read in spite of these little niggles – I enjoyed the conversational writing style, and the subject matter was very interesting, even if I wouldn’t necessarily take the book as an authoritative reference.
In a few places his assertions about factors that influence people’s success are backed up by science, but in many cases it’s not clear that they are. One will often find instances of “hey, look at these 3 Jewish families – there are lots of siblings who are doctors and lawyers, so being Jewish during a certain period in New York increases the likelihood that your kids will be professionals”. Now, maybe that’s the case. Unfortunately, it’s not the sort of thing that can be determined by looking at a handful of examples, and Gladwell never makes it clear to the reader that any more rigorous analysis was performed.
That being said, the book was fun to read in spite of these little niggles – I enjoyed the conversational writing style, and the subject matter was very interesting, even if I wouldn’t necessarily take the book as an authoritative reference.