I really liked The Tipping Point and was also impressed with Blink.  I read Malcolm Gladwell’s blog and enjoy that too.  So I was expecting to be a huge fan of Outliers as well.  Unfortunately, I was underwhelmed.

Malcolm Gladwell promised to turn upside down our understanding of what makes a person successful but unless you have been suckered by The Secret, I can’t imagine you will find it that ground breaking either.

The basic premise of the book is that highly successful people are so because they worked really, really hard and took advantage of the opportunities their culture and background provided for them.  That’s it….that is what is so ground breaking.

There are a few items in the book I liked.  First, I appreciated his “rule of 10,000.”  That is, excellence in an arena is achieved with 10,000 hours of practice and improvement.  For me, that hit home as I think of my ability to preach well.  Though I can learn theory and study methods, the only real way to become great is work hard.

Second, Much of today’s success literature focus on having a positive attitude and just writing down your goals.  I appreciate that this book takes that idea and blows it out of the water.  A positive attitude is important and having written goals that are reviewed regularly give one a target to aim at, but they are not magical elixirs, either.

Third, there is also a part in the book that talks about why pilots from Korea were more likely to crash than other aviators.  This had to do with the culture’s discouragement of questioning authority.  Some day this will make it into a sermon as an illustration of how we can question and dialog with God.

Finally, There are some other very interesting stories such as why most successful hockey players are born the first three months of the year and why Asians do better in math.

As is typical Gladwell, it is well written and he again is a master of building curiosity.  I did not dislike this book…I really enjoyed reading it…I just did not find it groundbreaking.  If you are on a budget and are a Gladwell fan, go the library route.