Similar to "The Tipping Point" (review here) I had mixed feelings about this book by Malcolm Gladwell.

On the plus side, there is no question Gladwell is a master at storytelling. The book was an engrossing and easy read that I finished on a lazy afternoon. I was very much entertained by the unexpected little puzzles embedded in his stories. For example, it was fascinating to see how small differences in birth year have a major impact on future opportunities. Imagine a computer science major born in 1975 vs. 1980. The former graduates just when the Internet bubble is at its peak, while the latter graduates when the bubble had burst. Regardless of how talented the graduate is, being born in 1975 is clearly an advantage in terms of opportunities available to him.

However, I strongly disagree with the premise of the book, which is that when people explain success, they only focus on the individual: their ambition, their brilliance, their propensity for risk-taking, etc. Gladwell's point is that successful people owe their success to other factors as well, which include unique opportunities available to them, cultural baggage, and good old fashioned hard work. Well, no duh!!

This is such a colossal "No duh!" that I feel I should say more. At one level, Gladwell is basically just referring to the Fundamental Attribution Error, which describes how people tend to explain other's people behavior via qualities of the person rather than circumstance. Example from Wikipedia:

As a simple example, if Alice saw Bob trip over a rock and fall, Alice might consider Bob to be clumsy or careless (dispositional). If Alice later tripped over the same rock herself, she would be more likely to blame the placement of the rock (situational).

Thus, it's not that unexpected that when we see a successful person, our first tendency is to assume there's something special about the person's abilities or personality.

While it may be true people's immediate impulse is to attribute success to the individual's qualities, I have not met anyone that denies circumstance matters.

In summary, I didn't find any original ideas or radical thinking from Outliers that wasn't already common knowledge. I give it 3 stars for being an excellent page turner.