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If I told you that –

  – Extremely successful people are usually very gifted.

  – Chance opportunities have a lot to do with success in life.

  – Extremely high intelligence is not a reliable predictor of success.

  – Upper middle class children have a greater sense of entitlement than poor ones.

  – Children who spend more hours in tougher schools are more successful.

  - Children who start school at six rather than barely five are often better students and athletes.

your response would probably be, “DUH! I don’t need to read a book that makes THOSE points.”

But Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell’s book on what goes into success, is not simpleminded and it is a lot of fun to read. Opportunities that lead to success are not always obvious:

  – The Italian peasants who settled Roseto, Pennsylvania, were not intending to create an earthly paradise.

  – The Beatles probably didn’t think that having to play eight hour gigs in Hamburg was going to result in fame and fortune.

  – Bill Gates didn’t know that the accidental purchase of a time-sharing computer in 1968 was going to jump-tart his amazing career.

  – Jews from Nineteenth Century Eurrope had little reason to believe that they were very prepared to succeed in 1890s New York.

  – Asians engaged in rice farming didn’t know that they were preparing their descendents for the famous Asian academic success.

  – Parents who had children between 1912 and 1917 didn’t know that their children would be much more successful than those born between 1903 and 1911. Success would have a lot to do with WHEN you hit the Depression and World War II.

Outliers, like Malcolm Gladwell’s previous books, The Tipping Point and Blink, is fun and it gives the reader a lot to think about. It is not a serious piece of scientific research. One reviewer said bluntly, “He’s cherrypicking.”  This book is for readers who regard interesting ideas as brightly colored toys and entertaining stories as intellectual ice cream. It is not for those who want only carefully documented and clearly established evidence.

Libraries should have Gladwell’s books because he has a talent for reaching the popular culture and affecting the way it thinks. Whether he will still be read fifty years from now is another question.

The Geography of Bliss
by Eric Weiner

Reviewed by Deborah Bryan, Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library

I love to walk in the great outdoors, and while walking, I love having a great book playing in my ears.  My latest traveling companion is The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner, a book that I appropriately-enough started while on vacation.  Now back at home, every time I get it ready to listen to while walking, I feel like I am on vacation again as I follow the author on his travels around the globe.

Eric Weiner is a former correspondant for National Public Radio who is no stranger to traveling to exotic spots around the globe.  In this book he attempts to answer the question, “Does where we live actually affect how happy we are?” by traveling to those places purported to be the happiest in the world.  Thus, the book is a travelogue of his journeys, filled with Weiner’s musings on the nature of happiness and wry comments about the people and places he encounters. 

For example, when he travels to Switzerland he asks a Swissman why he thinks people in his country are so happy.  “Have you seen our toilets?” the man replies, and goes on to explain that the state of cleanliness in Swiss public restrooms is a great contributor to their happiness.  Scenes like this make me laugh aloud while I am listening, prompting any people nearby to ask what has me so amused.
  
I also enjoyed encountering some of the most exotic places in the world through his words, such as Bhutan, Qatar, and Moldova (included for contrast as one of the unhappiest places in the world).  I am 99% sure I will never travel to those places, but his descriptions of them gave me a taste of what it must be like to visit these remote locales.

Weiner’s background as a radio announcer also serves him admirably in the professionalism with which he narrates his own words—and hearing the stories in his own voice adds to the charm of this delightful book.  Weiner’s sense of humor, wry observations and amusing metaphors definitely make this one a worthwhile listen—especially for those who like to travel or who like to learn about other countries.  But be warned—if it makes you laugh aloud as much as I did, you may have some explaining to do to anyone who is around while you are listening to it.