The Word On: Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell's books would be more intellectually honest if he simply dispensed with his frameworks altogether, but then ... he wouldn't be the cultural figure he is now. Like 'Freakanomics' guru Steven Levitt, Gladwell promises to unravel our knottiest problems with the simplest of paradigms. By turning the macro into micro, he frees life of its chaos. Gladwell, in short, is in the hope business.

Louis Bayard (salon.com/books)

Perhaps now that a man of African descent has been elected president, we have truly transcended race. But I still can't help but feel that 'Outliers' represents a squandered opportunity for Gladwell — himself an outlier, an enormously talented and influential writer and the descendant of an African slave — to make a major contribution to our ongoing discourse about nature, nurture and race.

John Horgan (slate.com.id)

Gladwell uses a staggering amount of research and statistics ... to prove his points, but in the end, falls short of trying to weave all his chapters together into one cohesive book. In this sense, the material seems like trivia, which makes it a good read, though it is really nothing to be taken too seriously ... I'd still like to believe that success is a product of innovation, creativity, hard work and hard-won wisdom.

Clarence Yu (blogcritics.org)