A brilliant new book from the bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Blink Why are people successful? For centuries, humankind has grappled with this question, searching for the secret to accomplishing great things. In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an invigorating intellectual journey to show us what makes an extreme overachiever. He reveals that we pay far too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where successful people are from: their culture, their family, and their generation. Gladwell examines how the careers of Bill Gates and the performance of world-class football players are alike; what top fighter pilots and The Beatles have in common; why so many top lawyers are Jewish; why Asians are good at maths; and why it is correct to say that the mathematician who solved Fermat's Theorem is not a genius. Just as he did in Blink, Gladwell overturns many of our conventional notions and creates an entirely new model for seeing the world. Brilliant and entertaining, this is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

马尔科姆·格拉德威尔（Malcolm Gladwell），被《快公司》誉为“21世纪的彼得·德鲁克”，曾是《华盛顿邮报》商务科学专栏作家，目前是《纽约客》杂志专职作家。

马尔科姆出生于英格兰，是牙买加人的后裔。在加拿大长大，现居纽约市。他曾经做过卫生政策和科学新闻方面的记者，其文章喜欢以小见大。马尔科姆是一个非常有创意的作家，他认为自己的文风属于一种adventure of ideas的风格，虽然大部分作品都不属于虚构，又不是围绕一个人物或者一个故事展开，但其中的故事情节却一般比较曲折，看他的文章很有adventure波澜起伏的韵味。