Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell

I enjoyed the book, but it was not nearly as inspiring as his other two.  It started out strong, but seemed to trail off at the end to me.

The premise of the book is that many (all?) of the really significant 'outlier' personal successes that we see around us are not due to some inherent exceptionality in individuals, but rather is result of some aptitude plus exploitation of opportunities that lead to vast quantities of experience that then leads to huge 'success'.  I suppose it is sort of a nature vs. nurture type of argument, where 'nurture' is access to almost ridiculous opportunities.

Where it kind of fell flat to me was that it felt very anecdotal.  Some of the topics are covered broad stroke (sports), but I don't feel like he made an general case with enough impact.  He certainly addressed the specific areas covered in the book well, and you can see how it would apply to other topical areas, but I came away feeling you would actually have to go through the same analysis to validate the applicability of his thesis.

Like his other two books, good read.