Analysis of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Being a story of success, Outliers is a book likely to attract readers seeking to live out the "American Dream" of a successful life. The synopsis on the bask side of the book was able to take hold of my interest by mentioning a logic that I did not even know existed. By suggesting that surroundings has something to do with a successful person's success and not just their intelligence and ambition, Gladwell could draw me into wanting to read more. Even if one is not interested in hockey, the Beatles, software programming, or any of the other topics in which people have found success in, the way Gladwell breaks down their successes is still interesting for the reader. The way that it is shown how all the stories are tied together gives the reader a reason as to why he/she is reading about the various examples.

After reading Outliers, my whole understanding of success has been proved wrong. The fact that the lives of Bill Gates and Bill Joy and many others have been broken down so much as to include the smallest details, I am aware of the opportunities and luck one must be faced with in order to achieve such an extreme level of success. My favorite example is the one about Joe Flom and the other lawyers that did not land a job in the top law firms because of their antecedents. They ended up taking all the cases that the big law firms did not want to deal with, which were the hostile takeover cases. Once those kind of cases became the big thing, the unwanted lawyers soon became the ones that everyone wanted, directing their law firms straight to the top. 

Some of the common themes that I noticed throughout this story included experiences, background, chance, and opportunity. Although intelligence is something that comes naturally, success does not. There is a series of things that must happen in order for it be occur, and the words just mentioned have a lot to do with it. The only question I kept coming back to throughout the period of time it took me to read this book, is how it is possible that the reasoning behind the successes Gladwell has found is the same for all of the other successful people in the world. The fact that I could not even convince myself to believe this at first makes the information in this book that much more amazing because Gladwell was able to change my mind by the end of the book. Overall I give this book five stars because due to the various examples of success broken down to explain the reasoning behind them, this has been the most interesting book I have ever read.

About Myself

My name is Marianne Dannemiller, and I am a junior taking AP Language and Composition at Archbishop Hoban High School.  I live in Wadsworth, Ohio with my dad, mom, older sister, and younger brother. Because I like to stay active, I am involved in volleyball, basketball, and softball as well as Yearbook, Student Ambassadors, and Knights for Life. What makes me unique is that I am one of the most indecisive people you will ever meet, I am obsessed with quotes, and my biggest peeve is when something is not done the correct way, and my biggest fear in life is failure.