TOW #4 Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell IRB

      Why do some people succeed far more than others? How are the Beatles so amazing? How did Bill Gates get so rich? Why are Asians so good at math? What makes a star athlete? The average person often questions these mysteries of life, but he probably won't ever completely answer that list of spontaneous yet extremely thought provoking questions. Many people assume that successes are innately talented and when they have a fiery ambition, that's where the success is born. Malcolm Gladwell, a renown bestselling non-fiction writer whose books explore psychology and sociology, explains that this is not the case. In Outliers, Gladwell, using a powerful appeal to logos and interesting narratives, effectively argues that the story of success is created from what surrounds a person, his family, his environment, or even his date of birth, simply put, luck, in order to allow readers to see success in a new perspective.

       The largest piece in Outliers was the appeal to logos: facts, quotes, observations, and statistics. Using his credibility as an established author on this topic, Gladwell analyzes the factual information he acquired into his hypothesis. He uses charts and tables all in a structure that is pleasing to the eye. It adds simplicity to the ocean of information and allows the reader to take Gladwell's argument seriously.

       Outliers is a non fiction book about sociology and the makings of success, not the everyday read for the average skimmer. What allows this book to connect to the general public is its use of narratives. The book itself starts out with a narrative about an "outlier" town called Roseto, not only was the narrative interesting, but it introduced the reader to the essence of Outliers. Gladwell also gives narratives, in a story-telling fashion, of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, the Beatles, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the scientists of the Manhattan Project. These narratives make the book seem like a series of biographies, making reading, at face value, a boring book about human behavior much more interesting.

     Both the appeal to logos and the effective use of narratives give Outliers a powerful argument that persuades the audience into pondering about this new idea of success. It gives readers the information they need and the stories they desire, making this non-fiction book about success truly successful.