Malcolm Gladwell Success

Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers talks about success, making a claim on how to achieve it. The book has led me to believe that there is a type of pattern when it comes to reaching success. Gladwell uses evidence to show the readers how there are many factors that contribute to being successful, such as, where you come from, the opportunities you have, the talent you were born with, your dedication or grit, and sometimes luck. Many people who read the book agree with Gladwell and support his hypothesis. Others such as Kakutani try to explain how the book has its weaknesses, being poorly reasoned and thoroughly unconvincing. I agree and disagree with Kakutani. I believe in some paragraphs she gives very little evidence and doesn’t explain her reasoning. In other instances I believe she is right and makes people second guess what Gladwell is trying to say. Gladwell draws a connection between national cultures that “place highest emphasis on effort and hard work”. He notes that students from Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan score high on country-by-country ranked math tests. If you grow up in a cultural where everyone works hard and it is the only thing you know, you must do it. You wouldn’t know any other way but whats normal to you because of the way you were raised. It is embedded in who you are as a person. This can be related to everyone in

Gladwell makes the readers believe there is something more to success than it just happening, but rather many things falling into place. The book is very deep having very valid points in some cases, but as Kakutani points out, there are also wholes in his argument. Both Gladwell and Kakutani are right and wrong in my opinion. This is true in a way that Gladwell gives evidence necessary to prove his point, but in other cases gives information that could be