outliers the story of success by malcolm gladwell

Problematic because, in a sense, it was so Victorian England. 'My grandfather was part of that coming-of-age, and my mother and her sister got a scholarship to a Victorian English boarding school on the other side of the island, where she received what she would describe as a very fine, if somewhat problematic education. My mother and her sister got a scholarship to a Victorian English boarding school on the other side of the island, where she received what she would describe as a very fine, if somewhat problematic education. It was in that moment in the 30s, 40s and 50s, when Jamaica was becoming a country on the cusp of its independence. It's a recounting of part of her childhood and I think she would describe her childhood as fairly idyllic. 'My mother wrote a memoir Brown Face, Big Master, which is one of my favourite books. 'My mother grew up in a little tiny town called Harewood. Her father and mother were teachers in the little local school next door. With her twin sister, they went to university in London and there she met my father, who was an Englishman. In 2012, Malcolm Gladwell spoke to Eleanor Wachtel onstage at the Toronto Reference Library as part of Jamaica 50, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Jamaican independence.

He started his journalism career at the Washington Post, where he worked for nine years before moving to the New Yorker. (Toronto Public Library)īorn in England in 1963 to a Jamaican mother and English father, Gladwell grew up in Elmira, Ont. and attended the University of Toronto. I am not sure some of these wide-ranging topics completely support his theories, as there are many more variables than those he singles out, but I found it informative and worth my time.Malcolm Gladwell speaking to Eleanor Wachtel onstage at the Toronto Reference Library in 2012. He ends the book on a personal note by taking a look at his family history.

He examines such unlikely topics as rice farming, airline accidents, hockey, and musical auditions. The author explodes the myth of individualism (which he calls the “self-made man”) and “the best and the brightest.” He believes we are squandering talent. There is an ironic element in this work, as one of his findings is that outliers can be explained by ordinary factors, such as opportunity, hard work, practice, environment, cultural legacy, luck, and being in the right place at the right time in history. He wants to change the way we think about achievement and success. He posits that if we examine the lives of outliers (such as Bill Gates, Robert Oppenheimer, Bill Joy, and the Beatles), it will provide insight into how to improve our world. In this book, he looks at phenomena outside of our normal everyday experience. He takes commonly held assumptions and shows, based on his analysis, they are either not true or limited. Gladwell is the “myth buster” of psychology and sociology.

Outliers the story of success by malcolm gladwell