Library: Outliers: The Story of Success: The Conversation

Book reviews

Wall Street Journal
"Talent and hard work, yes, but plenty of other ingredients seem essential to achievement."

Reviews of Outliers were wide-ranging, positive to negative.

Nature
"Does genius breed success?" (Select PDF. Requires campus login.)
New York Times
Thumbs Up: "Malcolm Gladwell says success depends not only on brains and drive, but on where we come from — and what we do about it."
New York Times
Thumbs Down: "It’s true: Success succeeds, and advantages can help"
The Guardian
"Stating the obvious, but oh so cleverly: In investigating what sets geniuses apart, is Malcolm Gladwell also asking what makes him so special?"
The New Republic
"It is an axiom of Malcolm Gladwell's method that a perfect anecdote proves a fatuous rule."
The Nation
Lengthy overview on critical reception of Outliers, and other Gladwell works.

Stephen Pinker: NY Times book review
"The reasoning in “Outliers,” which consists of cherry-picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry and false dichotomies, had me gnawing on my Kindle."

Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University, published a series of critiques and rebuttals in 2009.

Gladwell, Pinker letters to NY Times
Gladwell: "I have not joined [Pinker] on the lonely ice floe of IQ fundamentalism."
Pinker: "What Malcolm Gladwell calls a “lonely ice floe” is what psychologists call “the mainstream.”"
Malcolm Gladwell: Blog response, 12/3/2009
"An ice floe is not necessarily a bad place to be. It’s just that if you are plainly floating on one, it doesn’t make much sense to insist that you are standing on solid ground."