A new book by Malcolm Gladwell is dedicated to the theme of success. However, as usual, he approaches it in a very non-trivial way: Gladwell is convinced that personal efforts and abilities, no matter how indisputable they may be, do not play a key role in achieving an outstanding result.
A new book by Malcolm Gladwell is dedicated to the theme of success. However, as usual, he approaches it in a very non-trivial way: Gladwell is convinced that personal efforts and abilities, no matter how indisputable they may be, do not play a key role in achieving an outstanding result. And the stories of the Beatles, Bill Gates, Canadian hockey stars and other classic self-made men only confirm this: they all got a hidden advantage at the start that allowed them to beat the competition. For hockey players, this advantage is the date of birth: children born in January will be in the same group with those who were born almost a year later — in November or December, and, of course, older boys will have an easier time achieving success. Bill Gates was lucky with the school: in it (the only one in all of America!) in the late 60s, students had the opportunity to work at a computer. And the members of the Beatles quartet had a chance during a tour in Hamburg: forced to perform every day for eight hours, they managed to achieve tremendous professionalism and teamwork at the very beginning of their career. Offering such a strange and at the same time impeccably logical view of success, Gladwell simultaneously destroys our ideas about this phenomenon and builds new, more realistic ones in their place. And in this he is true to his principle, voiced in one of the interviews: «In a world where there is too much information and too little time, I offer readers a structure that allows them to streamline their lives.»
Alpina Business Books, 256 p.