The World's Best Book Summaries
What is a culture of honor? Why do people in a culture of honor tend to be more violent and respond to insults more aggressively? Learn how the culture of honor began with farming practices in the past, and why it continues centuries later today.
Who is Joe Flom, and what three lessons does Malcolm Gladwell teach about him in Outliers? Learn the secrets to Joe Flom’s success.
Christopher Langan is the smartest man alive, with an IQ of 195 (for comparison, Einstein’s was 150). But he has spent most of his life as a bouncer in a bar.
Robert Oppenheimer was also a genius. The theoretical physicist and father of the atomic bomb was one of the most important figures of the 20th century.
Why are the career trajectories of these two geniuses so dramatically different?
What is concerted cultivation? Described by sociologist Annette Lareau, this parenting style involves active engagement of parents in their children’s lives and activities. Is Concerted Cultivation good, and are there limits? Learn more in this excerpt from Outliers.
In Outliers, Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, is used as an example of the luck of timing. What made Bill Joy such an outlier, even among very talented Silicon Valley people?
What is a cultural legacy, in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers? Why does our culture from centuries ago leave a legacy that continues to affect us today? Learn the foundations of cultural legacy here.
In the early 20th century, Lewis Terman studied a group of child geniuses (his ‘Termites’) and followed them into adulthood. He expected them to be incredibly high achievers – Nobel laureates, CEOs, and heads of state. But what really happened?
Learn the truth about Lewis Terman’s termites here.
It may seem obvious that we need to work hard to succeed, but too often we attribute success solely to talent and forget that the hours we put in matter just as much as, if not significantly more than, the natural gifts we start with.
You need a certain level of natural talent to get your foot in the door in a particular field. But after you are “good enough,” practice becomes the determining factor in how successful you are. According to Malcolm Gladwell, 10,000 hours of practice is how long it takes to become an expert in something.
A lot of people obsess about intelligence testing and IQ tests. But why does intelligence matter? And what are the limitations of what intelligence testing can tell you?
at is accumulative advantage? Why does it make such a difference in a person’s success? Learn about the opportunities of accumulative advantage in this excerpt from Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.