Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers: The Story of Success

Copyright 2008 by Malcolm Gladwell

Reading group guide copyright 2010 by Malcolm Gladwell and Little, Brown and Company

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

www.twitter.com/littlebrown

Second eBook Edition: June 2011

Back Bay Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. The Back Bay Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The author is grateful for permission to use the following copyrighted material: American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, 2005 Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.; Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, by Annette Lareau, copyright 2003 Regents of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press; Intercultural Communication in Cognitive Values: Americans and Koreans, by Ho-min Sohn, University of Hawaii Press, 1983; The Happiest Man: The Life of Louis Borgenicht (New York: G. P. Putnams Sons, 1942). Used by permission of Lindy Friedman Sobel and Alice Friedman Holzman.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-316-04034-1

On an eternal quest to explain us to ourselves, Malcolm Gladwell once again turns his intellectual divining rod toward a common yet mysterious cultural phenomenonin this case, the lives of outliers, those remarkable individuals whose success millions of us strive to duplicate. What is the difference, Gladwell wonders, between those who do something special with their lives and everyone else? From software billionaires to professional athletes, Gladwell explains with his trademark counterintuitive logic how the habits of highly successful people pale in importance to where, when, and how you were raised. As always, insights guaranteed to comfort and discomfort equally.

Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

In the vast world of nonfiction writing, Malcolm Gladwell is as close to a singular talent as exists today. Outliers is a pleasure to read and leaves you mulling over its inventive theories for days afterward. Outliers represents a new kind of book for Gladwell. It is almost a manifesto.

David Leonhardt, New York Times Book Review

Unabashedly inspiring. A provocative and practical book about the landscape of success.

Jonah Raskin, San Francisco Chronicle

A must-read for educators, recruiters, and parents. Outliers is evidence of Mr. Gladwells 10,000 hours.

Joanne McNeil, Sunday Times

An important new book. Gladwell intelligently captures a larger tendency of thoughtthe growing appreciation of the power of cultural patterns, social contagions, memes. Gladwells social determinism is a useful corrective to the Homo economicus view of human nature.

David Brooks, New York Times

Outliers is a compelling read with an important message: by understanding better what makes people successful we should be able to produce more successful (and happy) people.

Economist

The explosively entertaining Outliers might be Gladwells best and most useful work yet. There are both brilliant yarns and life lessons here: Outliers is riveting science, self-help, and entertainment, all in one book.

Gregory Kirschling, Entertainment Weekly

No other book I read this year combines such a distinctive prose style with truly thought-provoking content. Gladwell somehow writes with a high degree of dazzle but at the same time remains as clear and direct as even Strunk or White could hope for.

Frank Reiss, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A fascinating and entertaining book, one that exposes the rarely acknowledged forces behind success.

James F. Sweeney, Cleveland Plain Dealer

Gladwells points are well worth pondering.

Business Week

Insightful. If enough people read and ponder the implications of Outliers, perhaps that can help begin the much needed process of turning around current counterproductive attitudes toward education and toward life.

Thomas Sowell, Washington Times

Malcolm Gladwell has a rare ability: he can transform academic research into engaging fables spotlighting real people. Outliers, with its entertaining psychology and sociology, is catchy and beautifully written.

Stephen Kotkin, New York Times

Its hard to resist Malcolm Gladwell. Reading one of his books is like sitting at the kitchen table while he runs about his house, pulling research studies out of file cabinets, thick biographies off bookshelves, and spreadsheets from his laptop. Check this out! he exclaims, and Can you believe this one?! Then he gets serious. You know how important this is, dont you? he asks. Ultimately, Outliers is a book about the twentieth century. It offers a fascinating look at how certain people become successful.

Rebecca Steinitz, Boston Globe

Thought-provoking, entertaining, and irresistibly debatable. Outliers is another winner from this agile social observer.

Heller McAlpin, Christian Science Monitor

Gladwells writing is always accessible and attractive, and his ideasculled from science, brimming with researchare fascinating.

Margaret Sullivan, Buffalo News

Gladwell turns conventional wisdom on its head. With his knack for spotting curious findings in the social sciences, he stands out among contemporary writers. Gladwell reveals his special genius in this remarkable trilogy completed by Outliers. It is in spotting remarkable jewels in the vast rock collection of social-science research and placing them expertly into an exquisite setting.

Howard Gardner, Washington Post

As in Blink and The Tipping Point, the anecdotes are dazzling and the data uncanny.

Max Ross, Minneapolis Star Tribune

No other writer today can pull this sort of thing off so well. If I hadnt just read Gladwells book, Id be jealous of his talent, instead of his luck.

Jerry Adler, Newsweek

An insightful book. Required reading for anyone interested in the psychology of achievement.

Connie Glaser, Atlanta Business Chronicle

The thrust of Mr. Gladwells argument is right on target. He passionately emphasizes the need to cultivate great minds that might be limited by their circumstances or environment.

David A. Shaywitz, Wall Street Journal

Downright entertaining and informative. Malcolm Gladwell makes us think. Is there any finer compliment for an author?

Al Hutchison, Tampa Tribune

Readable and entertaining. Malcolm Gladwell is a successful practitioner of what we might think of as a new wave of social sciencesociology, economics, psychology, historyfor a general readership. The success stories Gladwell relates are inspiring, and the tales of success, whether about hockey players, computer geniuses, corporate lawyers, or entrepreneurs, are narrated expertly.