Malcom Gladwell's Latest: Outliers

There are some books you buy after flipping through the pages a hundred times, weighing the cost and benefit attached to buying it before making the decision to pay the buck, but there are other books that you can just pick from the shelf and know that it will be worth your money. Malcom Gladwell's book fall in the latter category.
Gladwell has a knack of drawing uncommon conclusions from seemingly trivial data (like this talk titled 'What we can learn fromm Spaghetti sauce'). Though not as prolific as his previous books, Outlier has the signature Gladwell class. The book does a clean job in analysing the secret behind genius and successful men and is built on the premise that success is more a factor of hardwork (or meaningful work as he terms it) and cultural factors than mere individual talent. He profiles icons like Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, the Beatles, Mozart etc. to drive in the point how passionate and selfless hardwork, practice and timing(Gladwell analyses the birth years of Gates, Paul Allen and Jobs and the three of them were born in 1955!) contributes to success more than genius. I particularly liked the section where Gladwell analyses why students from East Asia do exceedingly well in academics in comparison to those from US or Europe, especially in math (Chapter titled Rice Paddies and Math tests). He puts the credit on rice farming - he argues that rice farming is one of the mot riskiest, labour intensive and sapping forms of agriculture and typically rice farming cultures have a tradition of hard work ingrained in them. It's a true gem when he goes on to compare the proverbs of different cultures and establishes the pivotal role played by culture in forming the innate qualities of an individual. (He compares Russian and Chinese proverbs. The Russian proverb says 'If God does not bring it, the Earth will not give it', while the Chinese one says 'No food without blood and sweat').
Gladwell's writing style is simple and terse, that all his books make a light and fast reading! So, the next time you are at a bookstore and happen to see Outlier staring at you, you shouldn't think twice before taking it home! It's an interesting read with a very important message - work harder for your success!
Here's the author himself talking about his book