Yesterday I finished Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. It was pretty much what I expected: short, readable stories all on the theme of success. Gladwell made a good case that the traditional narrative of success was flawed, but I would have loved it if he had dug deeper into the subject. To me, Outliers read like an extended TED talk – fascinating and entertaining, but short on meaningful ideas.
Don’t take that to mean it wasn’t a good book – it was. It’s enjoyable and it raised questions that I’ve never really thought about before. Gladwell is a good writer and a great storyteller, and I’m sure that this book accomplished everything he aimed for. I just wish he had aimed a little higher. A little more analysis, a slightly stronger argument – I think Gladwell is on to some cool ideas and I wish he had the guts to keep pushing. He grabbed my attention with his stories about how individual success occurs at the junction of good luck, good timing, good upbringing, and a lot of hard work. Imagine how much more he could have done in another hundred pages.
I know he’s a smart guy – the notes section at the end is incredibly useful and points the reader to a wealth of further sources, but so little of that wealth is invested into the meat of the book. It reads like a series of feature articles about interesting people edited together into a book. And for the price on the inside of the cover, I expect more.
I guess I’m really just disappointed that this is a popular science book. A really popular science book. I think Gladwell was afraid to be too intellectual, to challenge some of his readers, and to take a stand that not everybody would approve of. Maybe he would say he made the right choice, and his bank account would probably agree. But when I put down the book, I couldn’t help but wonder to myself “what could this book have been?” Maybe he’d turn some people off by writing a more in-depth book, but maybe the people who stuck around would be a lot more impressed by what he published. I know I would.
See the full list of books that I’ve read for this project here.
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