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A review by lightleafbooks
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
reflective
fast-paced
1.75
This book was incredibly disappointing, and completely derailed at the end. As per another reviewer’s recommendation, I listened to the “If Books Could Kill” podcast episode on Outliers, and I encourage all readers of this book to do the same. A few simple Google searches will reveal that Gladwell’s information (which he presents as so exotic and profound eg: the cusp year argument in chapter 1) has been extensively studied. On a similar coin, the other information (such as the resolute 10000 hour threshold where the only grandmaster to achieve that status was Bobby Fischer) is simply incorrect. There are 13 year old prodigies that have only been practicing the craft since they were 6 or 7.
It’s important to see both the positives and negatives of this book, and to see if the book really holds up, ESPECIALLY when it’s social psychology related and so vastly renowned.
Unfortunately, I really wanted to like this book, but couldn’t do so due to a lot of the reasons stated in the episode. I highly recommend to challenge the concepts you read in this book and to scrutinise if the concepts are as unique and illuminating as the author presents them to be.
There were some interesting aspects of this book, but otherwise it is extremely overrated (in my opinion)
It’s important to see both the positives and negatives of this book, and to see if the book really holds up, ESPECIALLY when it’s social psychology related and so vastly renowned.
Unfortunately, I really wanted to like this book, but couldn’t do so due to a lot of the reasons stated in the episode. I highly recommend to challenge the concepts you read in this book and to scrutinise if the concepts are as unique and illuminating as the author presents them to be.
There were some interesting aspects of this book, but otherwise it is extremely overrated (in my opinion)
Content Warnings
Minor: Rape and Slavery