Outliers
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band. Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.
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What Hacker News says
- You should read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
- list of (most of) the books mentioned in this thread so far. I tried reading every comment but used chatGPT instead.
1. The Big Rich - Texas oil boom.
2. Barbarians at the Gate - Private equity origins.
3. Masters of Doom - John Carmack and Id Software.
4. Einstein by Walter Isaacson - Einstein's discoveries.
5. Houdini!!! - The escape artist and magician.
6. The Double Helix - DNA discovery.
7. Stress Test by Tim Geithner - Financial crisis.
8. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - Concentration camp survival.
9. The Chariots of Apollo - NASA's space program.
10. Across the Airless Wilds by Earl Swift - Development of the moon buggy.
11. Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox - Apollo missions.
12. The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr - Food supply chains.
13. The Prize by Daniel Yergin - Oil industry evolution.
14. Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson - Ambitious wreck divers.
15. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes - Manhattan Project.
16. American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin - Robert Oppenheimer.
17. Conquistador by Buddy Levy - Hernán Cortés and the Aztecs.
18. Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner - Water infrastructure in the American West.
19. The Wright Brothers by David McCullough - The invention of flight.
20. Walt Disney by Neal Gabler - Vision and innovation in entertainment.
21. Tuxedo Park by Jennet Conant - Invention of radar.
22. Insisting on the Impossible - Edwin Land and instant photography.
23. The Logic of Failure - Understanding and avoiding failure.
24. The Big Short by Michael Lewis - 2008 financial crisis.
25. The Box by Marc Levinson - Shipping container revolution.
26. Latitude by Nicholas Crane - Cartography innovations.
27. When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashlee Vance - Space startups.
28. The Founders by Jimmy Soni - PayPal's early days.
29. The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester - Precision engineering.
30. The Little Engine That Could - Children's classic.
31. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - Success mechanics.
32. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight - Founding of Nike.
33. Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin - Building LIGO.
34. Freedom’s Forge - WWII industry mobilization.
35. Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes - Electrification by Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse.
36. The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough - Panama Canal construction.
37. Annapurna by Maurice Herzog - Climbing a Himalayan peak.
38. Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder - Data General engineers.
39. Showstopper by G. Pascal Zachary - Development of Windows NT.
40. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand - WWII survival.
41. The Measure of All Things by Ken Alder - Defining the meter.
42. The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll - Tracking a hacker.
43. The Man Who Knew Infinity by Robert Kanigel - Srinivasa Ramanujan.
44. The Power Broker by Robert Caro - Robert Moses and New York infrastructure.
45. How Big Things Get Done - Large-scale project execution.
46. Dealers of Lightning by Michael A. Hiltzik - Xerox PARC.
47. Built by Roma Agrawal - Civil engineering insights.
48. The Will to Keep Winning by Daigo Umehara - Competitive gaming.
49. Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold - Low-temperature physics.
50. Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins - Apollo 11.
- "To help the poor, make it easy for them to climb the economic ladder"
There is no "the poor"... rather its just people that do not have any other options. Primarily, higher education or certified skilled trades are the only effective way out of minimal income survivor economics.
In my opinion, people working at fast food chains making the minimum legally allowable wage work harder than any CEO or academic I've met over the years.
I would recommend this book as it quantifies how income disparity impacts young Americans development:
"Outliers: The Story of Success Paperback" (Malcolm Gladwell, 2011)
https://www.amazon.ca/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwel...
Notably, naively explaining passive income from assets to minimum wage workers is not usually a productive conversation. Rather, folks are just projecting their own perspective on people in a different situation. =3
- Picture this: Teenage me, eyeing a self-help book my old man brought home. I was skeptical, sure, but still green enough to think, "Hey, it's a bestseller. Gotta be some good stuff in there, right?" Fast forward 20 years, and boy, have things changed.
These days, my BS detector goes haywire the second someone starts singing praises of self-help books. Finance gurus, spiritual know-it-alls (I'm looking at you, Eckhart Tolle), you name it. But the crown jewel of nonsense? "The Silva Mind Control Method." I'm still gobsmacked by how many folks bring it up as their life-changing bible, despite it being chock-full of pure insanity.
The good news? It seems like it's getting tougher for these wordsmiths to pull a fast one on people. Gone are the days when you could slap together a bunch of truisms, sprinkle in some tall tales, and watch the cash roll in.
But hey, it's not all doom and gloom. There are some self-help gems out there that actually deliver the goods. "Atomic Habits," "Thinking, Fast and Slow," and Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" spring to mind. These bad boys? They're the real deal.
- Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
This is the first book that clearly made me realize that anyone can be very successful at any task that they pick. Talent is important but it's not the only and most important characteristic to success. People aren't born to succeed. They can and do learn how to do it. It's a learned process, not a God given gift.
- "Outliers".
A good reminder that practical inteligence is way more important than the qualification you get in an intelligence test.
