Just Do It

Malcolm Gladwell

by A.D. Amorosi

Mon. Feb. 2, 7:30 p.m., $7-$14, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-686-5322, freelibrary.org

After having made his tipping point and creating work that doesn't blink, New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell investigates why it is some people ascend and conquer while others never bother to achieve their potential in Outliers: The Story of Success. Gladwell often writes about socio-psychological research and academia gone pop and quickly viral — how the social sciences and their usual-suspect implications meet for intimate events with great expectations (The Tipping Point) and how the most assured folks at those parties subconsciously interpret the cues they received there (Blink). Outliers, though, seeks to figure out how those assured sorts got so damnably able and successful and what influence the other kids at the party have on our winner.

There are no self-made stars buoyed by their own smarts or talent. There are almost always outside elements — secret benefactors, family advantages, e-mail friend lists, college-to-young-professional parties, moneyed lovers — that push the best up the staircase to celebrity and wealth. Though Outliers does look at the potential for kids sans-those-opportunities to win and benefit — Canadian high school hockey players vs. legendary robber barons — it mostly focuses on the victors with cool circumstance. The winners are the winners in Gladwell's book. Mozart, the Beatles, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Bill Gates — they got the push. They won the spoils. So then, the question remains — did we need Gladwell to set up this straw man and tell us something we already know? Go ask him.