This is a really interesting book. I have no unique insights to contribute in a review; read anything on the internet. Try the David Leonhardt NYT review (gamers/gamers user/pass).
However, I do think I can elaborate on Yglesias’s theory about why it’s getting worse reviews than his previous work. Namely:
At the end of the day, it’s hard for me not to reach the conclusion that the backlash is, not coincidentally, coming just as Gladwell’s hit upon a politically charged topic and reached conclusions that are discomfiting to the very successful. I’ve seen a few people express the notion that Gladwell’s conclusion — that success is determined largely by luck rather than one’s powers of awesomeness — is somehow too banal to waste one’s time with. I think those people need to open their eyes and pay a bit more attention to the society we’re living in. It’s a society that not only seems to believe that the successful are entitled to unlimited monetary rewards for their trouble, but massive and wide-ranging deference.
Beyond that, it’s a society in which the old-fashioned concept of noblesse oblige has largely gone out the window. The elite feel not only a sense of entitlement, but also a unique sense of arrogance that only an elite that firmly believes itself to be a meritocracy can muster. Gladwell not only shows that this is wrong, but he does an excellent job of showing why it feels right. He explains that success does, in fact, require hard work — lots of it — and that people who think they got where they are through effort rather than good fortune are at least half right. The issue is that in some ways the best luck of all is the luck to be in a position to do hard work at a time when it pays off. Bill Gates, Gladwell explains, put in vast hours programming computers at a very young age at a time when almost nobody in the United States even had the opportunity to put in that kind of time in front of a computer screen.
As far as pop science books go, it’s a body blow to the American conception of how successful people got where they are. You can work hard all you want, and be smart all you want, but unless you’re lucky enough to have the opportunity (family income, social class, lack of bad luck) and do it at the right time (it’s not a coincidence that all the super-rich tech moguls were born in a 5-year period that made them the right age to capitalize on first-tech use of computers; it’s not a coincidence the all-time richest people list is crammed with Americans born in a certain 19th century 10-year period that made them the right age to capitalize on first-time industrialization), you’re not going to win. To boot, the smartest don’t win either - beyond a certain point, 130 or so, call it “smart enough to do well in a college”, IQ has no measurable relationship with success. At that point all the other factors take over.
Amusingly, the most convincing bit of evidence in the entire book is how strongly hockey success in the from-elementary-school system of Canadian hockey prep is correlated with birthdate. No, really - the kids born the closest to the cutoff for getting into an age bracket completely dominate the top players list at every level. You wouldn’t think that since they start off somewhat bigger than the other players would have such long-run effects, but does a great job of explaining on how that relative size difference makes them “better” at the beginning, so they get more accolades and specialized training, so they keep getting better, and it snowballs to the effect that people born in the second half of the year might as well not take up hockey in Canada. That hockey is a specialized sport requiring lots of equipment and exotic playtime feeds into this - the effect doesn’t exist as strongly for sports where anyone can just go play a pick-up game.