New IRB: The Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell

For my current IRB I chose to read Malcolm Gladwell's The Outliers.  I chose this book due to a few reasons.  One of the first is the fact that is was recommended by one of my past teachers with whom I share some common interests.  In class he often spoke of the book and even had us read a section at one point to assist in our comprehension of another topic.  The same teacher also recommended me another book by Gladwell, Blink, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  Although I do agree with Mr. Yost for the fact that his writing does start to get repetitive and even boring after a full book, I enjoy his style of writing and also his content, and this IRB gives me a chance to finally get to this book which I have been looking at for a long time, but have never gotten to.  The Outliers is an insight in the patterns off the successful and of the uncommon.  It explains subtle similarities that share part of the credit for many people's success.  Whether it was their birth month, birth year, or simply their race or religion, many hidden variables play major roles in a person's success.  This point of view on success is an outlier in many people's minds because it essentially can be stretched so far as to say that the reasons that people are successful are completely out of their control.  This makes people feel insecure because is says that there is a finite position to which they can succeed.  Gladwell is not specifically trying to make that point, but he simply takes his own interest into account when writing on how there are truly many patterns in the things that seem random, and that if you look close you can find them.