Outliers: The Story of Success

Front Cover
Penguin Books, 2009 - Psychology - 365 pages

Malcolm Gladwell shows why the story of success is far more surprising, and more fascinating, than we could ever imagine

Why are people successful? For centuries, humankind has grappled with this question, searching for the secret to accomplishing great things. In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an invigorating intellectual journey to show us what makes an extreme overachiever.

He reveals that we pay far too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where successful people are from: their culture, their family, and their generation. Gladwell examines how the careers of Bill Gates and the performance of world-class football players are alike; what top fighter pilots and The Beatles have in common; why so many top lawyers are Jewish; why Asians are good at maths; and why it is correct to say that the mathematician who solved Fermat's Theorem is not a genius.

Just as he did in Blink, Gladwell overturns many of our conventional notions and creates an entirely new model for seeing the world. Brilliant and entertaining, this is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

Other editions - View all

About the author (2009)

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of six international bestsellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, David and Goliath and most recently, Talking to Strangers. He is the host of the podcast Revisionist History, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and co-founder of the audio company Pushkin Industries. He graduated from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, with a degree in history. Gladwell was born in England and grew up in rural Ontario. He lives in New York.

Bibliographic information