This is a fantastic book about the "myth" of the lucky break. Gladwell proves that behind the myth of success there is actually a lot of hard work and happy accidents over which we have no control. Preparation allows the lucky few to jump on an opportunity that others overlook. ( )

A story of success written by a Master Thinker Outside of the Box. Malcolm Caldwell, whatever his methods and conclusions has given us reason to believe that success doesn't just happen to individuals because of their innate gene make-up, but rather is due to such circumstances as birthdate, opportunity, community, hard work, legacy and luck. The person of genius and success does have to have the inner composition to achieve in an area of life, but to that must be added many factors outside of his control. Could be a useful book in causing others to ponder the world's problems in new ways. ( )

His books keep getting better and better. This book had me talking about it and referencing it for days. ( )

Interesting book which challenges traditional explanations of success. ( )

This book takes a look at the wildly successful and attempts to identify the factors leading to them. It's an enjoyable read mostly because Gladwell is an excellent story teller, but I think his case could have been much stronger.

My biggest criticism is that he had an over reliance on anecdotes. He tended to look at individual examples and then attempt to generalize from those cases, but a skeptic might question just how generalizable those cases are.

He covered successful businessmen, artists, and athletes. Absent from his analysis, I noticed, were scientists and politicians. I find it curious that Einstein did not get a mention - perhaps because Einstein doesn't fit into Gladwell's model. I also have difficulty using many of his conclusions to explain the rise of Presidents, for example. Barak Obama was no doubt the beneficiary of good timing - coming in the wake of Bush and benefiting from civil rights struggles while having been somewhat insulated from them, but it's hard to explain his political talents using Gladwell's thesis. Both President Bush's relied upon a silver spoon and nepotism, subjects not covered by Gladwell. Clinton may have had good timing, but this is less clear. Reagan is similarly hard to see. Etc.

Two themes come through in the book. One is the importance of hard work. He does a very good job of making the case that there's really no such thing as innate talent - only people with the time, resources, and drive to put in the 10,000 hours the human brain seems to need to achieve expertise for any given field. Which isn't to say anyone can do it - quite the contrary, he makes the case of how luck plays its role. Bill Gates, to use one of Gladwell's examples, had parents who sent him to a private school, which was one of the few in the country at the time that had a computer, which he was able to practice programming on.

He offers some smaller examples as well. Much of the difference between a successful student and not is simply the amount of time the student spends in school, for example.

The other theme is the importance of timing. This is the strongest part of the book in my opinion, and not coincidentally, the most data driven. He looks at Canadian hockey players - who are disproportionately born in January and otherwise skewed heavily towards the early part of the year. The reason seems simple - the junior league cutoff date is January 1st, and someone born on January 1 is 12 months older and that much bigger than someone born on December 31. 1955 was the year to be born if you wanted to become a PC billionaire - it meant you were just the right age to start a company and ride the PC revolution starting in the late 70's.

The other point he made - and devoted half the book to - was the importance of cultural background. I felt this was a very weak case. His argument here was entirely anecdotal. That Asians might have a better work ethic because of their ancestor's experience on rice paddies, or that Korean Air had a poor record because of an authoritarian culture seems a stretch, and lacked any supporting data (For example, what percentage of Asian immigrants to the US actually came from rice paddies? He didn't say.)

Also curiously absent from Gladwell's book is any real discussion of class. In his world, there are only too - the poor, and everyone else. There's no discussion of social mobility, no quantitative analysis of billionaires beyond their birth year.

Nevertheless, while I don't think Gladwell captured the full picture, he does get at part of it. I'll recommend it, but I don't think it's the be all and end all on the subject at hand. ( )