It is also the most cognitively demanding form of agriculture. 'Rice farming is the most labor-intensive form of agriculture known to man. 'Rice farming lays out a cultural pattern that works beautifully when it comes to math,' Gladwell hypothesizes. Gladwell says he thought that Asian children might be inheriting a particular cultural legacy from their parents and their society that was helping them succeed in math - and he says he found the answer in the agricultural tradition of rice farming. 'They score way, way, better than American kids do.' 'One of the puzzles that educators have thought about for years is why is it that kids from Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong China vastly outperform their American or Western counterparts in math,' Gladwell says. Gladwell says he felt it was impossible to talk about achievement without talking about culture he wanted to untangle long-standing puzzles about success and nationality. ' had a one-in-a-billion chance to get good at programming in advance of every single member of his generation,' Gladwell says. Gladwell uses multibillionaire Bill Gates as an example of someone who benefited from extremely fortunate circumstances: In 1969, Gates' high school had a computer terminal at a time when even colleges didn't have them. When you look at the lives of the highly successful, the idea that they're self-made crumbles.'

'It's the age-old American myth of the self-made man,' Gladwell says, 'the idea that we are not wholly, but largely - responsible for our own success. Gladwell debunks what he calls the 'peculiarly American' belief that character, intelligence and hard work determine success. From corporate lawyers to talented hockey players to high-achieving students, Gladwell identifies 'outliers' as those who have 'been given opportunities, and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.' New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell takes on these questions and more in his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success. Why do Asian kids outperform American kids in math? How did Bill Gates become a billionaire computer entrepreneur? Was there something simply different about Mozart?

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell