Outliers

[owlectomy]

I've snarked about Malcolm Gladwell. I'll no doubt continue to snark about Malcolm Gladwell. But if Outliers can make the idea break through, to his huge audience, that the people who succeed succeed not just because of their own efforts, but because of the way the rules of their societies are set up to make success easy for some and difficult for others -- because of the roles that luck and privilege play in our lives even if we want to put our fingers in our ears and pretend they don't exist -- well. I gotta give the guy some credit.

(Entertaining book, incidentally, but it's kind of lightweight and leans heavily on the anecdata...)