The Outliers: The Story of Success Review

*I thought we were all going to use one thread, not make separate posts but whatever.

I really like this book. It was all based off of logical thinking and research and these are two things that I really appreciate. Gladwell was able to convey some really good points throughout the whole book. One point that I felt like many of the smaller points was based off of and that he actually kept repeating is that without opportunity there can be no success. When I first began to read this book on page 19 Gladwell says "People don't rise from nothing" and I put a note that states, Jay-Z and Oprah did. But now that I am reflecting on the book I realize what he actually meant by that line and I hold this to be self-evident based on the numerous examples he gave in the first half of the book. Furthermore another point that really caught my attention was the threshold of intelligence point, which is discussed in chapters 3 and 4. In these chapters Gladwell's main point is that up to a certain point a person's intelligence does not matter , therefore one must only be smart enough to able to achieve success. I really like the way he compared this point to being tall enough in basketball. Anyway, the way he was able to prove this was just basically looking at real world evidence, Gladwell compares the lives of Lewis Terman's termites and two people who where rejected from the program. It turned out that the two who were rejected from the program won Nobel prizes and none of Terman's termites won Nobel prizes, this made me giggle when I read it. Overall the book was actually really good, thought provoking and it made me consider all the factors of success that my idols needed and that I will need to achieve the goals that are set.