A review by katreads2022
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

hopeful informative fast-paced

2.5

My major gripe with this book are the leaps that Gladwell makes to justify his conclusions which range from reasonable to ridiculous. The notion that pure work guarantees success is borderline offensive and exhaustingly promotes toxic work culture. Although much of the success in this book Gladwell, at least implicitly, credits to luck and circumstances, his baseless insistence that putting 10,000 hours into something merits expertise has been endlessly debunked. I understand that research since its release has contradicted some of the assertions of this book and therefore Gladwell would not have the foresight to exclude them. However, an outstanding amount of this book is embellished or falsified with minimal evidence. The writing is fluid and while “Outliers” is entertaining, it lacks the evidential rigour absolutely necessary in a book claiming itself to be nonfiction. Some bits are interesting and insightful, but the pop-science it eschews should be taken with a grain of salt.