“Outliers: The Story to Success” is a beautifully marketed book. Pyramids of it gleam in bookstore displays, beckoning even those not yet swept by Malcolm Gladwell’s previous best-sellers, “The Tipping Point” and “Blink”. The title and cover suggest austerity, but depending on how literally readers take the word “story” found in the subtitle, they may be in for a rather unpleasant surprise. What many have anticipated as a self-improvement book, or at least one free of conjecture, this well-written volume is a compilation of stories on success. These are interesting, sometimes support Gladwell’s thesis, and are most of all entertaining. Their validity and relevancy however is sometimes questionable and I suspect a whole new book could be written with equally amusing counters.

In “Outliers,” Gladwell promises to show us in a somewhat scientific approach why some people are so much more successful than others. This is the crux of the book—it explores how the desire to know their secret from that angle is already flawed. Gladwell claims that if we wish to know the source of success, more than asking what outstanding people do, we need to ask who they are and where they came from. Depending on the expectations of the reader, the ensuing constellations he connects through seemingly random hockey players, Beatles and educational systems may spark the imagination, but it will not provide anyone with a new recipe for success.

The only recipe offered is the one most readers already know, and this Gladwell unveils piece by piece, in ways that are thought-provoking, but more interesting in parts than as a whole. For as a whole, the thesis is rather flimsy: Success, Gladwell wants to point out, is based on many things and some of these are out of our control. The opportunities of our age, the opportunities given by our parents and culture, our talent, our will, our effort, our charisma and luck. Weaving together wildly different examples, we may be impressed by his ability to find these oddball ways to illustrate his point, but few will be impressed by the point itself. Anyone reading for fun will enjoy his forays, and if these readers can take some of the anecdotes with a grain of salt, they will put the book down satisfied. Quite a few though may get caught up in semantics and that is valid as well. One of the biggest flaws of the book is the convenient blinkers it puts on a topic to spin it to prove a certain argument. Gladwell often constricts his definitions and lets generalisations run free. To give two examples: Why is Gladwell’s definition of success so rigid, confined almost exclusively to fame and wealth? What exactly is the connection between rice-farming, the shortness of spoken numbers in Asian languages and proclivity for math? (Assuming we can all agree on what the definition of Asian is, what Asian languages we’re talking about, and do we include people of Asian origins who are now living abroad?) Throughout the book, some of the examples fit his picture nicely; others merely raise questions regarding truth.

But then, does Gladwell claim to be bringing his readers the truth? It’s not as if “Outliers” sets out to deceive. If we go back to semantics, the word is right there on the cover, “story,” and readers looking for a new telling of an old topic and some nice cocktail party starters will be engaged by Gladwell’s intelligent writing. But anyone looking for a new theory will be hard-pressed to find it here. Yes, Gladwell assures us, success is still rooted in talent and luck and hard work and the current popularity of this book proves its point more than any reading you may find between the covers: It’s not always the substance that makes something successful—sometimes style and a little luck can take us just as far.

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