'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell - Book Review

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell investigates the causes of extreme success (outliers). Gladwell’s claim is that it is not primarily individual talent, hard work, or merit of any kind that causes success, but sheer circumstances and luck. The anecdotes he uses to make his points are enjoyable, but unfortunately his argument is weak.

Gladwell claims family background, culture, luck, privilege, and circumstances of various sorts together determine success, not individual effort and talent.

The author is unable to lay out a convincing case for this bold position. His arguments are superficial and involve poor and misinterpreted data. He makes contradictory claims. Gladwell often says an individual became successful because of a particular advantage, but these attributes, such as place of birth or religion, are shared by millions. How can you attribute someone’s success to one particular factor, given that millions enjoy the same advantage and other successful people often don’t have that particular good fortune?

Gladwell makes exaggerated versions of his opponents’ claims to advance his arguments. He claims, "We pretend that success is exclusively a matter of individual merit." No "we" don’t! Few of those who believe in the individual ignore the importance of circumstances, but Gladwell feels no such restraint or moderation in his own anti-individual view. On the final page he writes, "They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances...The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all."

Gladwell’s claims are firm, but his arguments are as limp as wet pasta. When he misinterprets data or makes a superficial arguments, the reader is unable to query him to see if there's depth and understanding beyond the limitations of what he's written. Does he argue simplistically because that’s really all he has, or to make the book brief and accessible? That’s the problem with pop intellectuals like Malcolm Gladwell, it’s hard to tell how much is pop and how much intellectual.