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Why do certain people succeed? Why do some rise above others? What makes them, in effect, outliers, unique and distant from the masses? These are the questions Malcolm Gladwell hopes to answer in his new book "Outliers: The Story of Success." Gladwell, the erudite New Yorker staff writer, has become familiar to many. His first two books, "Tipping Point" and "Blink" have sold nearly five million copies. They eloquently address complex pop-psychology topics establishing their creator as a writer of first-class talent, with considerable ability to distill research.

By this criteria, "Outliers" does not disappoint. Gladwell weaves entertaining anecdotes along with obscure research findings, while trying to connect them into surprising point. His approach is something like this: if you are from Canada, and dream of becoming a professional hockey player, much will depend on the month you were born. An interesting question leads to an unlikely answer. Your mind blown, the table is set, and with this beginning Gladwell uncovers that success owes as much to dumb luck as it does to raw skill. In fact, we find that success is born from many things-ability, timing, opportunity, culture, and chance, to name a few. The interesting question of "why success" leads to unlikely answers that seem surprising, but they're really not that surprising at all.

We're aware of the old proverb that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. Or, as Jared Diamond put it: success is dependent upon nothing going wrong. "Outliers" is billed as "the international bestselling guru's" answer to "the ultimate question: why are people successful?" But the answer seems to be nothing we didn't know before. Success is complicated. It takes more than skill. It may be true that in America there persists the romantic idea that ability alone enables you climb the ladder, but how many people really believe this, unless, perhaps, you were born on top of the ladder already? The rest of us have suffered under a supervisor who only had that position because that person was related to the owner of the company, or watched someone else get an opportunity because of some family connection. We all immediately recognize the injustice because we saw that they were on their way to outlierhood, while the rest of us cobbled along.

Gladwell recognizes the unfortunate fact that many people with the skills to succeed never have the chance to hone them. They born at the wrong time, born into the wrong environments.

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