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O u t l i e rs THE STORY OF S U C C E SS M A L C O LM G L AD W E LL #1 bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Blink $27.99 $30.99 in Canada Why do some people succeed far more than others? There is a story that is usually told about extremely successful people, a story that focuses on intelligence and ambition. In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell argues that the true story of success is very different, and that if we want to understand how some people thrive, we should spend more time looking around them — at such things as their family, their birthplace, or even their birth date. The story of success is more complex — and a lot more interesting — than it initially appears. Outliers explains what the Beatles and Bill Gates have in common, the extraordinary success of Asians at math, the hidden advantages of star athletes, why all top New York lawyers have the same résumé, and the reason you've never heard of the world's smartest man — all in terms of gen eration, family, culture, and class. It matters what year you were born if you want to be a Silicon Valley billionaire, Gladwell argues, and it matters where you were born if you want to be a suc cessful pilot. The lives of outliers — those people whose achievements fall outside normal experi ence — follow a peculiar and unexpected logic, and in making that logic plain Gladwell presents a fascinating and provocative blueprint for making the most of human potential. (continued on back flap) In The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell changed the way we understand the world. In Blink he changed the way we think about thinking. Outliers will transform the way we understand success. MALCOLM GLADWELL is the author of the #1 international bestsellers The Tipping Point and Blink. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker and was formerly a business and science reporter at the Washington Post. For more information about Malcolm Gladwell, go to www.gladwell.com. LOOK FOR The ==; • TIPPING POINT blink MALCOLM GLADWELL Malcolm Gladwell Also available from V"*"" Jacket design by Allison J. Warner Jacket photograph © Andy Crawford/Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images Author photograph by Brooke Williams Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com Printed in the U.S.A. © 2008 Hachette Book Group, Inc. Two of the most influential books of the past decade THE TIPPING POINT How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference "A fascinating book that makes you see the world in a different way." — Fortune "GladwelPs theories could be used to run businesses more effectively, to turn products into runaway bestsellers, and perhaps most important, to alter human behavior." — New York Times BLINK The Power of Thinking Without Thinking "A real pleasure Brims with surprising insights about our world and ourselves." — Salon.com "Royally entertaining." — Time ISBN 978-0-316-01792-3 O U T L I E RS ALSO BY MALCOLM GLADWELL Blink The Tipping Point O U T L I E RS The Story of Success MALCOLM GLADWELL LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • LONDON Copyright © 2008 by Malcolm Gladwell All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Little, Brown and Company Hachette Book Group 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com First Edition: November 2008 Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The author is grateful for permission to use the following copyrighted material: American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, copyright 2005 by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.; Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, by Annette Lareau, copyright 2003 Regents of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press; "Intercultural Communication in Cognitive Values: Americans and Koreans, by Ho-min Sohn, University of Hawaii Press, 1983; The Happiest Man: The Life of Louis Borgenicht (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1942). Used by permission of Lindy Friedman Sobel and Alice Friedman Holzman. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers : the story of success / Malcolm Gladwell. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. HC ISBN 978-0-316-01792-3 Int'l ed. ISBN 978-0-316-03669-6 1. Successful people. 2. Success. I. Title. BF637.S8G533 2008 302 —dc22 2008032824 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 RRD-IN Book designed by Meryl Levavi Printed in the United States of America For Daisy