Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

I enjoyed reading Malcolm Gladwell's other books, The Tipping Point and Blink. His newest book looks at what makes people outliers and stand-outs. Gladwell argues that it is a lucky combination of being born at the right time and having the right opportunities.

There are some really interesting stories in here which makes it a very easy book to read.

Some of his assertions and connections are, however, a bit over-generalized and simple. For example, I didn't agree with his argument that Chinese people (especially those from southern China) are excellent at math because they come from a rice-farming background that requires skill, persistence, and accuracy.

I think it's unwise and pretty dangerous to label an entire ethnic group as good or bad at something. So it's quite a claim that 1.3+ billion people are good at math because they have rice-farming in their background. Because if that's true, as a Chinese gal with good Guangdong province rice growing ancestors, I gotta say that maybe my ancestors were really bad at the rice thing, because I didn't get a knack for numbers. But I got one for words! Ah, maybe they played Scrabble in their spare time when they weren't tending to their failing rice seedlings.