In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectualjourney through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest,the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: whatmakes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too muchattention to what successful people are like, and too little attentionto where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, theirgeneration, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing.Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what ittakes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, andwhat made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

In Outliers, Gladwell (The Tipping Point) once againproves masterful in a genre he essentially pioneered-the book thatilluminates secret patterns behind everyday phenomena. His gift forspotting an intriguing mystery, luring the reader in, then graduallyrevealing his lessons in lucid prose, is on vivid display. Outliers begins with a provocative look at why certain five-year-old boys enjoyan advantage in ice hockey, and how these advantages accumulate overtime. We learn what Bill Gates, the Beatles and Mozart had in common:along with talent and ambition, each enjoyed an unusual opportunity tointensively cultivate a skill that allowed them to rise above theirpeers. A detailed investigation of the unique culture and skills ofEastern European Jewish immigrants persuasively explains their rise in20th-century New York, first in the garment trade and then in the legalprofession. Through case studies ranging from Canadian junior hockeychampions to the robber barons of the Gilded Age, from Asian mathwhizzes to software entrepreneurs to the rise of his own family inJamaica, Gladwell tears down the myth of individual merit to explorehow culture, circumstance, timing, birth and luck account forsuccess-and how historical legacies can hold others back despite ampleindividual gifts. Even as we know how many of these stories end,Gladwell restores the suspense and serendipity to these narratives thatmake them fresh and surprising