First things first: I trust you are all following the landing of Philae with bated breath. Now, on to book review.

“Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.”

I’m generally a little hesitant about Malcolm Gladwell. He presents a tasting menu of ideas: not enough to satisfy or in many cases even know what you really think, but enough to arouse curiosity or provoke thought. That can be a good thing, of course, but his reliance on stories and anecdotes – though entertaining – makes me nervous. Because I can’t tell if there is any factual basis to what he’s saying, I end up walking away from a book with some interesting stories, but no real insights to draw on because I can’t tell whether his stories generalize to anything larger. What I read from him I must look up elsewhere.

That said, two of his books that I hadn’t read happened to be in the library, so I thought I’d give them a try. The first, Outliers, focuses on the idea of success. Gladwell argues that we tend to see genius as a unique trait, something that sets the elite apart. That misses the point: success is not achieved in isolation, but rather requires opportunities. No matter how smart or how talented, without opportunities genius cannot bloom.

At the extreme, the thesis is somewhat trivial; if you get hit by a bus, genius won’t mean much. Gladwell has a point, though: we tend to neglect this fact in everyday conversation, ascribing enormous weight to individual action. I wonder, however, if this is just a question of definitions rather than the profound point Gladwell seeks to make. True genius may lie in making the most of the opportunities you are given, and so consist not just of IQ but also hard work, self-discipline, and other virtues – whether that’s saying anything revolutionary, I’m less sure. To take the Stoic line, we cannot control the opportunities we are presented with by the outside world: all we can control is how we respond to them, and that is where genius – and virtue – lies.