from Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

In the introduction Gladwell tells the story of Italian immigrants who settled Roseto, Pa. These isolated people lived to old age with little disease and a Dr. Wolf finally concludes that they live so long because of their community. Gladwell says "the values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are." His goal with this book is to "do for our understanding of success what Stewart Wolf did for our understainding of health."

Part I Opportunity

Chapter 1 The Matthew Effect.

When we asked about someone's success we usually want to know what the person is like. Gladwell says we mistakenly assume that personal qualities explain why a person is successful. Gladwell says, "I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariable the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It's not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't."

Chapter 2 The 10,000 Hour Rule

Gladwell says that talent alone will not make a person successful. He or she must put in his or her time also, and the amount of time is 10,000 hours. He cites examples such as Bill Joy who started Sun Microsystems after spending years of programming night and day, and the Beatles who found success after playing in Hamburg Germany where they played live shows for 8 hours a night, 7 nights a week for weeks at a time.

Gladwell also points out the importance of being born at the right time. Gates, Joy and many other computer industry success stories were born between 1953 and 1958. According to Gladwell this positioned them well at the right age in the mid 70's to capitalize on the personal computer revolution. Born earlier and they would have been to old. Born later and they would have missed it. The same holds true for an earlier group of industrial titans such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. They were born in the 1830's which positioned them to be at the best age to capitalize on the industrial revolution that began in the 1860's and 1870's. Gladwell does not discount talent and hard work, but he says that talent and hard work alone are not enough. Circumstances of fate, the time and place of one's birth also factor greatly into one's chances for phenomenal success.

Chapter 3 The Trouble with Geniuses, Part 1