I'd heard about this book, so when it came in the library the other day, I cracked it open to see what it was like. I couldn't put it down. I checked it out, jumping the line (librarian's priviledge!), and proceeded to devour it.

It reminded me very much of "Freakonomics", as Gladwell analyzed what made rich and successful people rich and successful. He dismissed the idea of an "overnight success", showing that anyone could become expert at anything, from piano to computer programming, if they just spend 10,000 hours doing it. He dismissed the idea of "genius", showing that once people had a functional IQ of at least 120, it wasn't about how intelligent people were so much as what they did with that intelligence. He highlights the importance of cultural and socio-economic biases; for instance, he shows that, while Asians are not inherently more intelligent than any other ethnic group, they DO have a much more rigorous cultural work ethic, and a completely different approach to mathematics, and both traits help them excel in comparison to other cultural groups. (In fact, Gladwell blames many of the failures of American education system on the existence of summer vacation, saying that many other countries have 40-60 more educational days in their school year...)

Fascinating stuff, and very thought-provoking...