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Review Of Malcolm Gladwell's 'The Outliers'

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Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Outliers, finishes his novel off with an epilogue discussing his mother and her status as an outlier. Gladwell (2008) first provides a simple summary of his mother’s path to success but then denounces that story with the statement “[t]hat is the story of my mother’s path to success – and it isn’t true” (p. 272). Gladwell feels that without explicitly outlining how his mother was able to get these opportunities the story is inaccurate. In his accurate version he notes how hard his grandmother pushed his mother to succeed and the advantage of being the skin color they were. Their skin color allowed his mother to marry a white man and avoid working to death in the fields. Also, contradicting himself, Gladwell (2008)

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