Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World — David Epstein

The route to a successful career isn’t a straight line, and you probably don’t know that you’re already on it

In 1993, philosopher and historian Isaiah Berlin described thinkers as either hedgehogs, who know “one big thing”, or foxes, who know many “little things”. In other words, do you put all your knowledge into one all-encompassing system that explains everything you need it to, or do you gain little snippets of reliable information and use one or two of these in whatever situation you encounter? Another (over)simplification: do you go deep or go broad?

David Epstein, former writer at Sports Illustrated, argues in his new book, Range, that foxes beat out hedgehogs in the modern world, and he presents a wealth of evidence to back up that notion. This goes against most of what we hold dear in what is considered “success” in the today’s world, where specialization is the ubiquitous advice pretty much from birth, especially in certain areas like sports or music. (This is at least accurate in middle-to-upper-middle-class white households. More on that later.)

If you boil down Epstein’s argument (which doesn’t do the book justice: you should still read it for yourself if you can), he contends that we all…