-Thomas Sowell, Washington Times

"Malcolm Gladwell has a rare ability: he can transform academic research into engaging fables spotlighting real people.... Outliers, with its entertaining psychology and sociology, is catchy and beautifully written."

-Stephen Kotkin, New York Times

"It's hard to resist Malcolm Gladwell.... Reading one of his books is like sitting at the kitchen table while he runs about his house, pulling research studies out of file cabinets, thick biographies off bookshelves, and spreadsheets from his laptop. 'Check this out!' he exclaims, and 'Can you believe this one?!' Then he gets serious. 'You know how important this is, don't you?' he asks.... Ultimately, Outliers is a book about the twentieth century. It offers a fascinating look at how certain people become successful."

-Rebecca Steinitz, Boston Globe

"Thought-provoking, entertaining, and irresistibly debatable.... Outliers is another winner from this agile social observer."

-Heller McAlpin, Christian Science Monitor

"Gladwell's writing is always accessible and attractive, and his ideas-culled from science, brimming with research-are fascinating."

-Margaret Sullivan, Buffalo News

"Gladwell turns conventional wisdom on its head.... With his knack for spotting curious findings in the social sciences, he stands out among contemporary writers.... Gladwell reveals his special genius in this remarkable trilogy completed by Outliers.... It is in spotting remarkable jewels in the vast rock collection of social-science research and placing them expertly into an exquisite setting."

-Howard Gardner, Washington Post

"As in Blink and The Tipping Point, the anecdotes are dazzling and the data uncanny."

-Max Ross, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"No other writer today can pull this sort of thing off so well. If I hadn't just read Gladwell's book, I'd be jealous of his talent, instead of his luck."

-Jerry Adler, Newsweek

"An insightful book.... Required reading for anyone interested in the psychology of achievement."

-Connie Glaser, Atlanta Business Chronicle

"The thrust of Mr. Gladwell's argument is right on target.... He passionately emphasizes the need to cultivate great minds that might be limited by their circumstances or environment."

-David A. Shaywitz, Wall Street Journal

"Downright entertaining and informative.... Malcolm Gladwell makes us think. Is there any finer compliment for an author?"

-Al Hutchison, Tampa Tribune

"Readable and entertaining.... Malcolm Gladwell is a successful practitioner of what we might think of as a new wave of social science-sociology, economics, psychology, history-for a general readership.... The success stories Gladwell relates are inspiring, and the tales of success, whether about hockey players, computer geniuses, corporate lawyers, or entrepreneurs, are narrated expertly."

-Crispin Sartwell, Philadelphia Inquirer

"Thought-provoking.... Gladwell roves widely, anecdotally, and always readably.... The book's miscellany of information and individuals entertains."

-New Scientist

"Outliers is probably Malcolm Gladwell's most important book yet.... Gladwell gives you a new way of seeing the world."

-Michael Bond, Nature Magazine

"Gladwell's unique perspective challenges readers to think about intelligence, success, and fame in a new way.... Outliers is a clever, entertaining book that stimulates readers' minds and broadens their perspectives. It is, in its own way, genius."

-John T. Slania, BookPage

"Outliers will sell jillions of copies in the time it takes you to read this paragraph. And while thousands of its readers will be business students and corporate executives looking for Gladwell to demystify the incomprehensible behavior of human beings for them, the target audience for Outliers could just as well be very anxious parents in America."

-Joel Lovell, GQ

"With Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell has done it again: taken what might have been a dry and pedantic subject and instead produced an enjoyable, almost breezy, treatise on the exceptional... illuminated with the minute-yet-telling details that mark Gladwell's best work."

-Scott Coffman, Louisville Courier-Journal

"Gladwell knows how to spin a yarn from what might otherwise be dry sociological and psychological studies by weaving in anecdotes and interviews that illustrate his theories on how to maximize human potential."

-Michelle Archer, USA Today

"I like the way Malcolm Gladwell makes me think.... Gladwell uses his special brand of pop sociology and a collection of intriguing anecdotes to postulate that timing has as much to do with success as grit and brains."

-Susan Reimer, Baltimore Sun

"Gladwell once again proves masterful in a genre he essentially pioneered-the book that illuminates secret patterns behind everyday phenomena.... Gladwell tears down the myth of individual merit to explore how culture, circumstance, timing, birth, and luck account for success-and how historical legacies can hold others back despite ample individual gifts. Even as we know how many of these stories end, Gladwell restores the suspense and serendipity to these narratives that make them fresh and surprising."

-Publishers Weekly

"Outliers is a provocative and stimulating book, a pleasure to read for its clear prose and its vigorous intelligence. Gladwell's timing is once again impeccable, and with the benefit of his good Canadian education, he's equipped to share his grasp of zeitgeist with an audience eager for enlightenment."

-John Strawn, Portland Oregonian

* The way Canadians select hockey players is a beautiful example of what the sociologist Robert Merton famously called a "self-fulfilling prophecy"-a situation where "a false definition, in the beginning... evokes a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true." Canadians start with a false definition of who the best nine- and ten-year-old hockey players are. They're just picking the oldest every year. But the way they treat those "all-stars" ends up making their original false judgment look correct. As Merton puts it: "This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning."

* A physically immature basketball player in an American city can probably play as many hours of basketball in a given year as a relatively older child because there are so many basketball courts and so many people willing to play. It's not like ice hockey, where you need a rink. Basketball is saved by its accessibility and ubiquity.

* Even more social phenomena can be linked to relative age. Barnsley and two colleagues, for instance, once found that students who attempt suicide are also more likely to be born in the second half of the school year. Their explanation is that poorer school performance can lead to depression. The connection between relative age and suicide, however, isn't nearly as pronounced as the correlation between birth date and athletic success.

* The sociologist C. Wright Mills made an additional observation about that special cohort from the 1830s. He looked at the backgrounds of the American business elite from the Colonial Era to the twentieth century. In most cases, not surprisingly, he found that business leaders tended to come from privileged backgrounds. The one exception? The 1830s group. That shows how big the advantage was of being born in that decade. It was the only time in American history when those born in modest circumstances had a realistic shot at real riches. He writes: "The best time during the history of the United States for the poor boy ambitious for high business success to have been born was around the year 1835."

* The super IQ test was created by Ronald K. Hoeflin, who is himself someone with an unusually high IQ. Here's a sample question, from the verbal analogies section. "Teeth is to Hen as Nest is to?" If you want to know the answer, I'm afraid I have no idea.

* To get a sense of what Chris Langan must have been like growing up, consider the following description of a child named "L," who had an IQ in the same 200 range as Langan's. It's from a study by Leta Stetter Hollingworth, who was one of the first psychologists to study exceptionally gifted children. As the description makes obvious, an IQ of 200 is really, really high: "Young L's erudition was astonishing. His passion for scholarly accuracy and thoroughness set a high standard for accomplishment. He was relatively large, robust and impressive, and was fondly dubbed 'Professor.' His attitudes and abilities were appreciated by both pupils and teachers. He was often allowed to lecture (for as long as an hour) on some special topic, such as the history of timepieces, ancient theories of engine construction, mathematics, and history. He constructed out of odds and ends (typewriter ribbon spools, for example) a homemade clock of the pendular type to illustrate some of the principles of chronometry, and this clock was set up before the class during the enrichment unit on 'Time and Time Keeping' to demonstrate some of the principles of chronometry. His notebooks were marvels of scholarly exposition.

"Being discontented with what he considered the inadequate treatment of land travel in a class unit on 'Transportation,' he agreed that time was too limited to do justice to everything. But he insisted that 'at least they should have covered ancient theory.' As an extra and voluntary project, 'he brought in elaborate drawings and accounts of the ancient theories of engines, locomotives etc.'... He was at that time 10 years of age."