Book Review: Outliers

We often think that every person is a self-made person. A lot of us implicitly believe that the world is a meritocracy. If someone is rich then that person has worked hard at some point of time. If someone is poor then it is because that person is lazy. We like to think that we own our success and others are responsible for their own failures. We think that success is a function of intelligence, hard work, and perseverance alone, but in the doing so we neglect a hell lot of other factors which plays an important part. Sometimes those factors are random but often there are patterns in that randomness.

The book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell explores some of these patterns and try to answer the question “Why some people are more successful than others”. Don’t get fooled by the tag line of the book “The story of success”. This isn’t some self-help book which will teach you how to write your own success story. Rather it tells you how the stories of success or failure get written by factors which an individual cannot possibly control. Every chapter of the book is woven around an anecdote which makes Outliers a very engaging read. But that is exactly the reason the book shouldn’t be taken at the face value because anecdotal evidence is one of the worst evidences you can get to support any conclusion. Nevertheless, Outliers is a great read.