The Malcolm Gladwell Backlash
I’ve really been taken aback by a lot of the hostile response to Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers that I’ve read. This isn’t a book without flaws. But the flaws in the book are flaws that have long been present in Gladwell’s writing. And at the same time, Gladwell has long been one of America’s most successful and celebrated non-fiction writers. And that’s because the flaws in his work are, frankly, pretty darn forgivable. Nothing he writes is up to the standard of a peer reviewed scientific journal, and everything he writes is about a million times more readable than anything you’d find in a journal. Yes, some of the stuff in Outliers (in particular, the bit about airplane crashes) doesn’t really seem relevant to the main point, but that’s true of The Tipping Point and Blink as well and folks didn’t seem to mind too much. Nor should they mind too much — the bit about plane crashes is fascinating.
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.
It’s a discomfiting thought. And an important one. So I hope people read Outliers. Or at least David Leonhardt’s review rather than Michiko Kakutani’s. And could someone tell me what the deal is with The New York Times reviewing some books twice?
214 Responses to “The Malcolm Gladwell Backlash”
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December 8th, 2008 at 9:58 am
There’s something hilariously wrong with your picture.
could someone tell me what the deal is with The New York Times reviewing some books twice?
I think Kakutani reviews whatever the hell she wants upon a book’s release, but the Times realizes her reviews are worthless, so they get a good writer to review the book in the Book Review a couple weeks later.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Matt, in 200 words or less, please describe how your success was determined as much by luck rather than hard work–if not moreso by luck.
I’m a fan of Gladwell’s work, and due to finals haven’t had time to start on Outliers, but the criticism appears valid (again, without having read it) that the book is just a more contemporary rehashing of people trying to poke holes in other people’s success by whatever means possible.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:06 am
I haven’t read the book yet, but the question of the role of luck in determining success is hugely important from a philosophical/moral perspective. It seems to me nearly everybody who considers himself successful believes he earned every penny through grit, determination, hard work, and overall moral superiority. The truth is most of them (the ones I know) were essentially set up by their daddies. They just don’t see it.
Less obviously, being born to upper-middle-class parents creates expectations that you’ll get mostly A’s in school, and going to college is such a baseline expectation that the option not to go is not even considered. Expectations play a huge role in what people believe is possible – poor kids are of course aware of college and may even believe they could attain it if they achieve superstar achievements, compared to their peers. But for me, I just schlubbed through college without an ounce of motivation and I still landed a pretty sweet job because not going to college was never a possibility. Plus my parents knew people, and I got really lucky with my first real job which I thought was a lowly tech writing job but turned out to be in the high-dollar management consulting business. Awesome! So the pay’s not limited to $30k a year after all.
Bottom line: Rick folks complain taxes as a form of “punishment” for being “successful” and “hard-working.” It’s awfully, awfully hard to complain about taxes on luck. A more realistic assessment of the role of luck in success leads, inevitably, to a stronger case for progressive tax rates.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:07 am
As right noted, Matt, your screen-cap skills could use some polishing.
That said—I personally don’t disagree with Gladwell’s conclusions, and I’ve enjoyed reading many (though not all) of the man’s New Yorker pieces. It’s just that I find his strategy of argument-by-anecdote to be not at all persuasive.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:10 am
And could someone tell me what the deal is with The New York Times reviewing some books twice?
Sunday Book Review has editorial independence.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:10 am
“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 think the Gladwell backlash would have happened around the timing of this book no matter what the subject matter.
His love of shininess and indifference to truth was bound to catch up with him at some point. A love of shininess and indifference to truth works far better in the short-run than the long-run.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:10 am
I haven’t read the book, and haven’t really seen the ‘backlash’ (I have seen no ‘lash’ either way), but I thought I saw him interviewed on Colbert or something and his main point was that although luck largely determined the very top performers, that no one got anywhere near that category without a phenomenal amount of effort & practice, and I believe he gave the figure of 10,000 hours of practice for musicians and others.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:10 am
nvs: Well, gosh, let’s see. Matt makes his living by writing, and his grandfather is a famous novelist. Language skills are heritable. From there it’s pure speculation on my part, but I imagine Matt’s family is pretty well connected, and the lived in the northeast corridor instead of, say, Boise.
I could literally go on and on. None of this detracts from what Matt has done with himself – he made good use of the resources at hand. But he had resources at hand, and it’s probably not a gigantic coincidence that the progeny of successful writers find some success with writing careers.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Who thinks that Bill Gates success at Microsoft is primarily about Gates’ ability as a programmer?
Someone should mention Richard Posner’s review in TNR of Blink: “a book intended for people who do not read books”.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:16 am
nvs:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/11/i_am_terrifying.php
December 8th, 2008 at 10:16 am
It’s too bad Matt rarely looks at his comments (or frankly, even his blog, judging by that oddball screencap). I seriously doubt that he would disagree with those who point out that his own success owes a lot to luck.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Great post Matt.
By the way I work nearly every day with very wealthy sucessful people, and nearly to a person luck plays some substantial component on how they got to where they are (some more then others – I have dealt with people who never would be anything at all without luck), and denying this fact is at the very heart of the rights “moral” perspective.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:16 am
I’ll just echo what El Cid said. That’s the exact impression I’ve got although I have yet to read the book. Of course all successful scientists/doctors/lawyers/etc work really hard. But a large amount of circumstance and luck have to do with whether they reach the very pinnacle. And it seems like he is talking about more than just whether your parents are in the same field/have a lot of money/whatever. The examples I heard were things like
“Tons of the best New York lawyers are Jews whose parents worked in the garment industry and were born in the 30s”
“40% of the richest people ever born were born in the 1830s in the USA”
That’s more than just “I had awesome parents!”
December 8th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Matt, in 200 words or less, please describe how your success was determined as much by luck rather than hard work–if not moreso by luck.
Since Yglesias usually doesn’t engage with his comments, I’ll point out that he’s repeatedly noted, including in relation to this very issue (I believe) that the point in time when he started his blog has had a disproportionate effect on his professional circumstances, and that he doubts a college student of equal capacity and motivation starting up a similar blog today would achieve the professional stature (such as it is) that Yglesias has in so little time. There’s a reason so many of the popular/semiprominent liberal online voices are around the same age (and have consequently wound up as members of the same DC-based social circle, which I find entertaining at times, but is probably a bad thing for the quality of their work in the long run). 2003 or thereabouts was a better time for an ambitious college student to start politics-blogging than 2001 or 2005.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:18 am
I believe he gave the figure of 10,000 hours of practice for musicians and others.
OT: 10,000 hours divided by 40 hours in a working week=250 hours, or about five years of full-time work. Based on the effort put in by the successful people I know in the arts and sciences, I’d say Gladwell’s figure substantially underestimates the necessary committment.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Whoops–I meant 250 weeks.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:22 am
> Who thinks that Bill Gates success at Microsoft is
> primarily about Gates’ ability as a programmer?
I am no fan of Bill Gates, but his success was clearly due to his being able to foresee the future of the personal computer industry more clearly than IBM’s entire completment of marketing, sales, and legal people – a group that probably numbered 5000 and had 1,000,000x the resources to make their determination. Mr. Gates saw the future and he and his mother wrote a contract that outsmarted all of IBM. That was actually quite an accomplishment, although of course he had far less to lose if he was wrong than IBM.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Perhaps people had a livelier understanding of the role of luck back in the day when two of your siblings could be carried off by scarlet fever.
On the other hand, while I too pine for the days of noblesse oblige, I’m not so sure they really existed. It just seems like you see a lot more of noblesse oblige when the alternative is rioting. (I just listened to this on the Reform Act, so that’s a top-of-mind example; but I’m also thinking of stuff like the Wagner Act. Or Civil Rights.)
December 8th, 2008 at 10:41 am
The backlash against Gladwell is cumulative exasperation and jealousy that he’s made a franchise from identifying general behavioral characteristics that we’ve all thought about, but weren’t smart or disciplined or (infinite regress!) lucky and/or connected enough to pursue and develop into books that people wanted to read. I don’t think there is a backlash based upon Gladwell touching some third rail of elite privilege in our society–it’s just a backlash against someone who’s made a career out of stuff we usually think about for a minute and then move on.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:42 am
> Who thinks that Bill Gates success at Microsoft is
> primarily about Gates’ ability as a programmer?
How many remember cp/m ??? a few? CP/M (control program for microcomputers) was an operating system developed by Gary Kildall. According to legend, IBM was looking for an operating system for the personal computer they were going to introduce and planned to use this; Kildall was uninterested in meeting with the IBM reps (or so the story goes), but a young programmer, Bill Gates, promised an OS. Gets kind of murky here, he acquired a product from a Seattle firm, renamed it DOS and … well …
so IF Kildall had met the reps that day, would Gates still have become the richest man in the world?
December 8th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Not Really: Yes, I’m sure Bill Gates had the whole future history of the IT industry already worked out in his head and was smarter than every person at IBM rather than, sasy, just outwitting Bob in Contracts because Doug was vacationing in Orlando that week.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Great post Matt.
(And yes, Gates’s programming skills were even more incidental than your thesis suggests. His business skills were more important, and family connections.)
December 8th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I AM NOT A CRACKPOT.
I have not read Outliers but saw it being discussed on TV so will pretend that I have something important, interesting and insightful to say about it that will be read by and widely influence other people.
There are in general three ways of looking at the themes of Outliers, as I understand them. One is to argue that it’s all misleading resentment. The other is to accept that coincidence will play a role in success, so we should not poltically worry about whether achievement reflects some ideal of worthiness and just focus on raising standards of living. This, however, allowing the bosses to cut in line as long as everyone has bread and circuses is a very continental position that would not go well in America. Obama and the American left is based on making opportunity count and the dignity of work, so the American left might not be able to accept a substantial role for coincidence (including connections) in at least economic success which could lead to an unpleasant and counter-productive emphasis on levelling, scolding and regulating about how and who can get ahead.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Wow – understanding luck will undermine the left. How wonderfully counterintuitive.
More likely, I think, is that those of us who have fallen for the Randian hero/industrialist claptrap of the past 40 years will start to recognize that heroic self-making is largely a myth and that daddy’s golf buddies play a bigger role.
Once that happens, it will be harder for the right to characterize progressive taxes as “punishing” “success.”
December 8th, 2008 at 11:01 am
There is a serendipity occurring in the publishing world. Connect Gladwell’s “Outliers” to Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly’s new book “Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back”
See http://www.alternet.org/workplace/109509/ for an intro to it.
michael
December 8th, 2008 at 11:03 am
From Rich in PA:
I don’t think there is a backlash based upon Gladwell touching some third rail of elite privilege in our society–it’s just a backlash against someone who’s made a career out of stuff we usually think about for a minute and then move on.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I don’t about the States, but the “backlash” against Gladwell has been active since at least Blink in the UK (I don’t think The Tipping Point was particularly big here). Fairly or not, most critics on this side of the pond think his underlying arguments are banal.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I saw an interview with him, and one of the things he noted was hockey players in Canada tended to have birthdays in January/February/March. He noted the signifigance of this was to start playing on teams you had to be 8 years old by January 1st. As such, the kids with those birthdays say in January tended to be better developed then those with birthdays say in December.
To me the explanation sounded quite logical.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:10 am
The problem with Gladwell is that his New Yorker articles are amazing pieces of short-form culture and science writing while his books are terrible pieces of medium-form business pablum.
His books usually get a pass because everyone reads his New Yorker articles for years, loves them, reads his book, is completely unmoved, then a new article appears in the New Yorker and they forget that the book sucked.
So all you need to do is remember that there are two Malcom Gladwells: the great magazine writer and the terrible business writer.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Three steps to writing a Malcolm Gladwell book:
1. Find something counter-intuitive that, when you think about it for a little bit, is actually obvious.
2. Assemble a collection of clever anecdotes vaguely related to point #1 that your readers can bust out at parties, assuming everyone else hasn’t read them too (unlikely)
3. Profit. Handsomely
I don’t dislike Gladwell but his style is much better suited to shorter-form pieces like his New Yorker stuff. His articles at gladwell.com (free archive) on ketchup and Ron Popeil are absolutely brilliant, and very entertaining. He’s just too glossy and unrigorous to really satisfy in book form.
If anyone wants to read a heavier, yest still consistently entertaining piece of countierintuitive brain food I’d highly recommend Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Bosch’s Poodle:
The broadness of this critique makes it applicable to everyone. All you have to do is identify a moment very early in someone’s life where a parent/sibling/etc. bestowed upon them some great benefit, and then map out how that benefit affected their future success, and VOILA!, their success was based mostly on luck, or as you put it “daddy’s golf buddies.”
It’s fairly apparent that the backlash is not in response to Gladwell’s book (or anything in it), but to the people who read it and invoke it as a call-to-arms against anyone that is more “successful” than they are.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Yes, because Kildall didn’t want to run a company the size of Microsoft.
He just didn’t have the motivation.
I think this is a bit of the point of Outliers. It’s not just luck, it is the willingness and talent to jump down the opportunity given you. Gates had that drive. Kildall wanted something different.
It’s similar to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Woz never wanted to run a big company, he just wanted to tinker.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Bosch’s Poodle said ” . . .that daddy’s golf buddies play a bigger role.”
I have always prefered to call it “winning the sperm lottery”.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:22 am
“so IF Kildall had met the reps that day, would Gates still have become the richest man in the world?”
No. Kildall, who was already wealthy behind his CP/M programs, apparently went to a previously set up flying engagement when IBM came calling. Gates’ highest ambition at that point (assuming as he did that Kildall was acting from an economic rational basis) was to get the IBM PC Basic programming franchise (whic they did, as well). The opportunity to get the IBM operating system franchise (indeed, the fact that IBM was not going to lock the OS up) was a stunning piece of luck, and IBM’s move in that regard generally considered the worst business decision in history. Keys to the kingdom and all that.
Gates was phenomenally engaged, and ready. He would have succeeded and become a very large figure. But having the control of the PC operating system dumped in his lap? That’s luck.
On another front, while I haven’t read the book, the luck involved with the Beatles is overrated. Figuring out that they needed to do all that work in Berlin? Starting bands when they were kids? Writing great tunes? Not luck.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:24 am
The problem of looking back on someone’s life like this is that we only see the luck they had, but not the luck they would have had had things been different. Bill Gates probably wouldn’t be the richest man in the world without the particular luck of getting into computers at the right time, but he probably wouldn’t be cooking fries at McDonald’s either. What might have come along? Opportunities big and small come along, much more often in a more priviledged life, but they do happen. To a certain extent all those traditional personal qualities (hard work, intelligence, etc.) to a large extent relate on whether when an opportunity comes along are you able to jump on it.
To take a better example, Napoleon Bonaparte almost certainly would not have taken over all of Europe if he hadn’t been able to waltz into a power vacuum in Paris at the right historical moment, but I tend to think we would have heard from him somewhere else.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:26 am
I think perhaps writers and reviewers tend to dislike Gladwell because they have that, “this is so obvious! why didn’t I think of that, and write it this well, and make all that money?” reaction. Readers who don’t write for a living think, “wow, that seems so obvious but I never thought of it before! This guy’s great!”
I haven’t read Outliers yet, and while it sounds good, isn’t it just a longer version of Ecclesiastes 9:11?
December 8th, 2008 at 11:30 am
On the one hand, the backlash strikes me as greatly overstated. He is selling a lot of books, and he’s always had those like me and a few other comments less than fond of the glib generalizations and anecdotal evidence.
On the other hand, while I have read only an excerpt, there could be a reason for more scornful reviews. The first two books were somewhat counterintuitive while reinforcing an appealing generalization. I think they were even wrong. Reviewers who dislike the new book seem to think he’s lost that ability to surprise, since they find the conclusion too obvious for words. I’d have to agree. Ok, so everything is due to a mix of luck, skill, and hard work. Great.
I should say why I thought the other two were wrong. The second seemed to overlook the degree that quick judgments are reliable to the extent that they are trained. The first seemed so annoyed that things like a drop in crime could have multiple explanations that it then had to dismiss them all in favor of a “real” answer that may not be anywhere among the most important. (One might note how much Giuliani’s star is fading, as the squeegee guys seem less and less important.) It ended up arguing that the most important factor in freezing water might have little or nothing to do with cooling it near the freezing point.
When it comes down to it, the two first books also reinforce a certain marketing view. Identify the movers and shakers, then hitch your success to pitching to them. It’s a good strategy, but it’s not the only strategy, and I doubt it’s a coincidence that it appeals to America’s adulation of power and hope to be included among it.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Yeah, the Blink book looked worrisome to me given the political environment: A book advocating gut instinct and the expense of careful analysis did not, it seemed to me, amount to a promising development in the middle of the Bush years.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:36 am
The feeling of learning is fun. Gladwell’s trick is that he allows everyone to have the feeling without going through the hard work that learning often requires. I think the bad reviews would be retroactive. People who should have know better in the first place have recognized a pattern.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:45 am
nvs: I’m not saying that hard work, attention to detail, and creativity are not important, nor that they shouldn’t be rewarded with whatever compensation they generate. What I’m saying is that they’re only part of the formula for the vast majority of people. Another large part of the formula is having good luck and avoiding bad luck.
Certainly very successful people tend to capitalize on opportunity. But less successful people also try to capitalize on their smaller opportunities.
I think avoiding extremes of generalization is important. It’s not all luck, and it’s not all heroic self-making. It’s a balance for most people. From a Rawlsian perspective I think policy should not shy away from at least striving to tax luck to a certain extent as a form of social insurance, while also ensuring that hard work tends to pay and that people profit from their good behavior and decisions.
But the truth is that the right has been very, very successful in selling the myth that the successful generally earn everything they’ve gotten, and in diminishing the role of luck to nearly nothing.
I’m repeating myself, but recognition of the role of luck contributes to the moral case for progressive taxation, and to me that’s a very big deal because it’s a truthful and effective response to rightwing bleating about punishing the successful and so on.
December 8th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Ok, I haven’t read Gladwell, but: “Nothing he writes is up to the standard of a peer reviewed scientific journal, and everything he writes is about a million times more readable than anything you’d find in a journal.”. Not the best trade-off as far as I’m concerned, I mean, if he’s making specious or unsupported arguments, does it matter if they’re readable? I know that there’s a big gap between “not up to the standard of a journal” and “specious and unsupported”, and I do think some people might resent “Outliers” out of insecurity or status protection, but if we don’t demand rigor–and not just interesting observations–from non-fiction writers we’re just going to get misled.
December 8th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I haven’t read the book yet, but am eager to do so as it will validate my belief that I’m not nearly as successful as I should be.
December 8th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
There’s a book from a few years back called “The Two Percent Solution” by Matt Miller. The best part of the book, the main takeaway for me, was his interview with Milton Friedman, where he got Friedman to admit that luck was a very large part of anyone’s success. Friedman himself said something about how lucky he had been in his health, where his own siblings struggled with health issues and the diminished energy and capacity they bring. And we have a free market in luck, I guess.
December 8th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I have not read Gladwell’s most recent book, but I derived lasting enjoyment from reading his defense of the character of car salesmen.
December 8th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
And at the same time, Gladwell has long been one of America’s most successful and celebrated non-fiction writers.
Shouldn’t that read “…has long been one of Canada’s most successful and celebrated…”?
I know he lives in New York and all, but still…
December 8th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
I haven’t read Gladwell, but would like to add another perspective.
By focusing on “who is successful”, we’re contributing to the “great man” view of history. I doubt that the information revolution of the last 2 decades would have been much different without Bill Gates or Microsoft. Our media loves celebrity, and focuses on entrepreneurs and other rich people.
Let me give one example: heart surgery. There has been an amazing revolution in heart surgery from, roughly, WWII to the present. Who’s responsible? multitudes of remarkable teams of surgeons and other medical personnel. Very few are nameable, and most of the advances were performed by remarkable teams.
December 8th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
For mine own part, I find myself incapable of taking Gladwell seriously since I attempted to read Blink, which is one of the most poorly reasoned and researched books I’ve ever come across. Gladwell also tends to fall into the irritating clique of overhyped middlebrow authors who write vacuous books for the New York Times-reading demographic that feature bold, contrarian theses which seem counterintuitive because they are, in fact, wrong. (File under Friedman, Thomas).
All that said, and without reading the book, I’ll just note that Gladwell seems to be making all the right enemies with this one. Its thesis is both self-evidently true and yet nonetheless dangerous to the dominant paradigm in American business writing. The vilest people in our media-industrial complex are spouting off extremely unconvincing criticisms of the book and making asses of themselves in the process.
So whatever the merits of the actual book, I think there’s some real value to the ruckus that it’s causing.
December 8th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I haven’t yet read Outliers, but I have read his previous two books as well as a couple of other articles of his. He’s a very engaging writer, and he does inspire further thought on the subjects he writes about.
That being said, can anyone out there glean a thesis from Blink? As far as I can tell, he describes examples in which snap judgments were accurate and useful, and situations in which they were inaccurate and harmful, but fails to give any kind of theory or advice on how to discern the difference between the two.
December 8th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
The problem with Gladwell’s latest book isn’t the conclusion he draws, but the haphazard pseudo-scientific way he presents evidence. And for people who seem to think the thesis is that “luck” is a large factor in success, that isn’t quite the point. It that circumstances and background, which are largely determined by chance, are as influential as hard work. More so, in fact.
Gladwell presents a possible argument for pushing toward greater social equality, but by creating his argument sloppily using lukewarm anecdotal evidence, he is guilty of cherry-picking data. Sure, I suppose it’d be a net positive if “Outliers” stayed on the bestseller list for a long time, since many people would read the book without a discerning eye and accept the premise (that is central to the liberal drive for social justice). I’d rather people read every book with a critical eye. Gladwell has become a popcorn non-fiction writer, the kind of writer that CEOs feel virtuous reading even though he produces nothing more than homilies and graphs.
To the first commenter who attacked Kakutani, she’s their premier critic. She is one of the few critics that focuses entirely on criticism and is not afraid to call out the weaknesses in a book. The Times can count on her to offer a true critique, without the warm and fuzzy feelings of contemporary authors asked to review books. Given Gladwell’s status, the Times kowtows by giving him a softball review, but they also try to maintain their virtue by having Kakutani review it.
December 8th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
As an unsuccessful person, let me just say: Gladwell’s conclusion strikes me as banal simply because it’s so freaking obviously true. I’m sure it’s rather obviously true to most unsuccessful people. He’s therefore clearly writing for the successful class, to whom his insight may not be so obvious. And if you think about why successful people might need to read such a book, you may get halfway to understanding why there is so much resentment of successful people in this society.
December 8th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Way off topic (sort of).
I was extremely unimpressed with the NY Times Book Review’s list of 100 best non-fiction books in 2008. As a scientist, I counted about 4 or 5 science books. All were written by middle-brow authors. Good non-fiction science books are hard to find, but they exist.
December 8th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Of possible interest (right, I’ve read the book) is that the 10,000 hours number (to achieve mastery of any particular topic) that’s bandied about is actually worse than it sounds. At various points in the book Gladwell makes the point that this should be 10,000 hours spent in a particular manner that addresses your weaknesses. So, for example, for a programmer time spent writing programs that function similarly for different platforms or that perform different tasks but are structured similarly won’t count towards the quota. Similarly, for a basketball player, merely playing pick up with the guys on the corner isn’t enough — unless you take pains to actually improve your game each time you play.
December 8th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I’m with too many steves that King Solomon (or rather, an anonymous author pretending to be King Solomon) appears to have come on Gladwell’s thesis more than 2000 years ago.
Napoleon Bonaparte almost certainly would not have taken over all of Europe if he hadn’t been able to waltz into a power vacuum in Paris at the right historical moment, but I tend to think we would have heard from him somewhere else.
I suspect that without the revolution he’d have been a competent French army officer who never really reached high rank because of the snobbery of the French officer class. If there’d been a big war, he might have had a chance to distinguish himself, but I doubt he’d have gotten much higher than a competent junior commander.
December 8th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Exactly. People make snap judgments. Sometimes they’re good. Sometimes not. Sometimes there’s a lot of experience behind a snap judgment. Sometimes not.
Not a bad way to start a brainstorming session, but where’s the beef?
December 8th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I don’t think the 10,000 hour rule is controversial. Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman, which was not extensively reviewed this year when it came out (more’s the pity), goes much further into the research on the 10,000 hour rule. Sennett is a good writer, for a sociologist, but he doesn’t have Gladwell’s ability to seem to grasp all the strands of an idea and easily pull them together to make the reader understand them. That is a wonderful gift. That said, the section on the jetcraft pilots was not a problem in the book – it was the chapter on Southern honor culture and the almost absurdly overgeneralized chapter on Asians and math that I found shoddy. The latter could only be written by someone with no knowledge of the history of mathematics in either region, or the revolution affected in China by Mateo Ricci’s translation of Euclid into Chinese, or what the seasonal cycle for peasants was about in Europe, etc., etc. That chapter was like a bright 13 year old’s Jared Diamond imitation. Not good Gladwell.
December 8th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
I read Blink. Within the first few minutes I understood that his main argument was “trust your instincts.” My instincts were to close the book right away, and honestly, I do wish I had trusted them. Gladwell was absolutely right.
So now I am going to trust my instincts and not waste my time on anything more from him.
December 8th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Within the first few minutes I understood that his main argument was “trust your instincts.”
Except that it’s more like, “trust your instincts, except when you shouldn’t,” but instead of then writing about how to tell the difference between when you should and shouldn’t, he just gives several examples of both.
December 8th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Haven’t read the book, but here’s the quote from it from Sailer’s blog:
Now, that’s just a monumentally stupid thing to write. LeBron, Shaq, Yao, are not great players merely because of their skills, but because of their skills at their size. And if you somehow found an 8-footer with LeBron’s quickness and other skills, he’d be even more unstoppable.
I hope the whole book isn’t that bad.
December 8th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
“As such, the kids with those birthdays say in January tended to be better developed then those with birthdays say in December”
But, The Other Steve, Gladwell’s point is actually much more interesting and powerful. Youth hockey is age-segregated according to birth-year, and prior to puberty boys grow a lot during the year in strength, size and coordination. Youth hockey is highly competitive – coaches want to win, not just to develop players. And pro-level hockey skills can’t be developed without lots and lots of supervised ice-time – it’s not like basketball in the hood.
You put these together and what you get is that kids born earlier in the year are bigger, stronger and more coordinated, and so from the beginning they get more ice-time, and move even further away from later-born kids, so that by the time the kids are teenagers, the January kids have moved permanently ahead in skills. In the teenage leagues, players don’t play in annually age-segregated teams, but by then it’s too late for the later-born players to catch up.
If Gladwell is correct, he’s identified an inefficient market in hockey player training. His findings imply that there are later-born kids who would be competitive or better players if they had the opportunity of later-born kids, but they don’t. So the sport of hockey is leaving skilled players on the table.
His argument here isn’t about luck. It’s about entrenched market failure.
Many upper-middle-class parents, by the way, believe that the same phenomenon holds true for school, and therefore hold their later-born children back so that they can be the among the oldest each year instead of among the youngest.
December 8th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Ever heard of the phrase one trick pony? That’s Malcolm Gladwell.
Gladwell has made a career out of becoming contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian.
Joel Spolsky on why Maclolm Gladwell shouldn’t be taken seriously:
“This review captures what’s been driving me crazy over the last year… an unbelievable proliferation of anecdotes disguised as science, self-professed experts writing about things they actually know nothing about, and amusing stories disguised as metaphors for how the world works. Whether it’s Thomas Friedman, who, it seems, cannot go a whole week without inventing a new fruit-based metaphor explaining everything about the entire modern world, all based on some random jibberish he misunderstood from a taxi driver in Kuala Lumpur, or Malcolm Gladwell with his weak theories on tipping points, crazy incorrect theories on first impressions, or utterly lunatic theories on experts, it all becomes insanely popular simply because the stories are fun and interesting and everybody wants to hear a good story. Spare me.”
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/11/18.html
December 8th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Have any of you read this article yet: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/elite-deresiewicz.html)?
One of his key points is that the folks who attend Ivy League schools are told — and the message is continually reinforced by these institutions — that they are better than everyone else and their acceptance is proof of that. A sense of superiority and entitlement is continually reinforced. The author also elaborates on other factors, such as the fact that folks at Ivy League Schools are given multiple second chances not available to your students and state schools, etc. He also notes that virtually all of his students are the children of professionals.
I can’t comment directly as to the veracity of this (having not gone to an Ivy League School) but my husband attended a prestigious Art School and he has talked a lot about how everyone there was constantly being told how they were more creative than anyone else and that the average person is clueless and their tastes deserve nothing but scorn. He was a scholarship student from a working class background who had a lot of trouble with what he felt was institutionalized snobbery. So I had no trouble believing that similar things go on in the Ivy League.
The point is that where Gladwell’s premise is touching on sensitive ground is this notion that many rich, powerful and influential people hold that their success IS due to their own inherent superiority and that the fact that most of them come from privileged or relatively privileged backgrounds is irrelevant. But it’s not. I see that as “luck”. And I think a minimal level of genuine recognition of the role education and “class” has on success in our society needs to be understood. Which leads to a lot of other uncomfortable thoughts…
December 8th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
The backlash against Gladwell stems from Gladwell making the huge mistake of taking up blogging so he can argue with his critics. Stepping out of the New Yorker cocoon has revealed that he’s not all the bright. Of course, that makes him the best example for his theory that luck is hugely import in success. (A theory that goes back to Ecclesiastes, however.)
In Malcolm’s defense, he’s wonderfully curious and enthusiastic about ideas. His problem is that he has no ability whatsoever to perform reality checks on ideas that he has become infatuated with.
The first step in the downfall of his reputation came a few years ago when he decided to argue on his own site with a particular criticism of Blink made by Judge Richard Posner in the New Republic and by myself in VDARE. Gladwell’s long response begins:
“One of the most bizarre reactions that I received from reviewers of Blink is an absolute inability to accept the notion of unconscious prejudice. Here is an example from a fairly well known writer named Steve Sailer. Sailer, in turns, quotes from a very hostile review of Blink in The New Republic by Richard Posner.”
http://www.gladwell.com/blink/biblio/chapter3.html
Judge Posner and I had criticized Gladwell’s defense of the moral character of car salesmen. Gladwell argued that the reason car salesmen charge blacks and women higher prices is that they don’t realize they are unconsciously discriminating, which lowers their own profits. Posner and I scoffed and said car salemen are mercenaries who are exploiting their customers’ predilections.
Later in 2006, Gladwell returned to the topic to write four hilarious blog posts defending the character of car salesmen against the Posner-Sailer aspersions.
December 8th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
One should also point out that Gates essentially defrauded Seattle Computer Products out of their DOS prototype, by concealing from them the fact that IBM wanted it and then changing the language of the contract to give Microsoft ownership rather than merely leasing it.
In short, it was Gates relentless drive to steal every penny out of everybody’s pocket in the whole world that enabled him to be successful.
Anybody who has read any of the bios of Gates knows that this guy is a MAJOR asshole.
And Microsoft itself is the Moise Aisley of computer companies – a wretched hive full of scum and villainy. Microsoft does not sell software – it sells lies. It’s products are garbage and its method of selling them is software lock-in, coercive contracts with resellers, and uniformly ignoring the wishes of its customers.
December 8th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Even when Gladwell stumbles upon a good idea, like that, as Newton said, if an individual sees farther than others do, it’s primarily because he’s standing on the shoulders of giants, he manages to undercut it by examples that he hasn’t thought through.
For example, Gladwell has a long section on how Bill Gates got to be the richest man in the world by getting 10,000 hours of programming as a teenager. But Gates didn’t get to be the richest man in the world by being a fine programmer (there are lots of fine programmers), he got it by being a monopolist, which requires another skill set.
Similarly, he argues that the key to the Beatles is that they got to play for thousands of hours live in Hamburg. But the Beatles weren’t, relatively speaking, a particularly great live band. In fact, they gave up playing live in 1967. Instead, they were a truly great songwriting and studio band.
This doesn’t mean that Gladwell’s idea that a lot of practice is essential is wrong. Of course, it’s right. But the constant page after page examples in “Outliers” that Gladwell doesn’t really know what he’s talking about (the relentless drizzle of small stupidities reminds me of Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”) fatally undermines the well-informed reader’s confidence in Gladwell.
December 8th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
His problem is that he has no ability whatsoever to perform reality checks on ideas that he has become infatuated with.
This is a problem? If so, please give me the kind of “problem” that puts millions of dollars worth of advances and royalties in my bank account.
December 8th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Right, a complete lack of skeptical cognitive ability has made Gladwell a fortune in corporate speaking fees. Corporations looking for a sales conference speaker love a guy who sounds interesting but toes the line of political correctness faithfully, in part because he doesn’t have the brainpower to question it. No corporation wants to have it brought up in the discrimination lawsuits they are constantly dealing with that they hired a speaker who ever says anything politically incorrect.
December 8th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Of course success is due more to luck than anything else. This is an obvious, but only to those who either take the minute or two required to reflect on it or sometimes those whose careers quite obviously are the result of the luck of the genetic draw (sports figures, models, hollywood actors). The interesting point is how the rich react to this. Those who are admirable recognize the role luck has played in their lives are feel an obligation to share their wealth. Those who are morally bankrupt look for every lame excuse to justify holding onto to their money and acquiring more no matter how obscene the whole thing may become. Unfortunately, as Matt points out, we live in a society dominated by the immoral and characterless. We can only hope their time is short.
December 8th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Consider a counter-example: It would make all sorts of profit-seeking sense for a corporation to hire a speaker who has an intimate knowledge of the results of the ongoing federal National Longitudinal Study of Youth, which began tracking about 12,000 14-22 year olds in 1979. We now know which ones proved to be successes as adults and which ones failures, and we can observe what factors as youths predicted success as adults and which ones don’t. This kind of information obviously would be very useful in making good hiring decisions.
The best-known expert on NLSY data is Charles Murray. He’s also an excellent speaker and presenter.
So, here’s the question: who gets hired more by Corporate America to give speeches: the brilliant, superbly-informed Murray or the (relatively speaking) foolish, ignorant Gladwell?
In fact, I’m not sure if Murray ever gets hired by corporate America to give speeches, while Gladwell has as many offers to give speeches for many tens of thousands of dollars as he can accommodate.
December 8th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
A more useful starting point for analyzing the issues of luck, merit, and reward from a political perspective might be this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Winner-Take-All-Society-Much-More-Than/dp/0140259953
December 8th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Thanks Steve, by the very virtue of disagreeing with him, you’ve convinced me to buy his latest book! Malcolm Gladwell couldn’t buy better advertising!
December 8th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
“And could someone tell me what the deal is with The New York Times reviewing some books twice?”
The Sunday Book Review is a separate publication from the newspaper. It’s distributed separately to the trade; the fact that it’s also distributed with the Sunday Times confuses many people into thinking not independent.
December 8th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
So, Mr. Sailer, what does the research tell us about who’s going to succeed? Is there maybe some easy way to look at a job applicant and decide whether he’s likely to succeed? Inquiring minds want to know!
December 8th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
The Masters of the Universe, having earned failure, manage to maintain their wealth by forces far more sinister than luck.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Nor should they mind too much — the bit about plane crashes is fascinating.
And wrong.
Very very wrong.
December 8th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Oops.
Link
December 8th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
This is the sort of statement that makes the Gladwell naysayers come across as such retards.
Gladwell does not claim to be doing original research, neither does he claim to be unveiling the secrets of the universe. His strength is, and always has been
- telling a story damn well AND
- choosing stories to tell that happen to be very interesting.
You know something, Rich in PA, it’s not that easy to tell a good story. How about you stand up in front of a Moth story slam and show us your mad skillz?
Gladwell knows what he does well, and plenty of us enjoy seeing him do it. What exactly is your complaint? That he should not entertain us?
December 8th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Hint: you do not impress anyone with your incisive take-down ability when you completely misinterpret the entire premise of the book.
Blink was about situations where gut instinct does, and where it does NOT, work. It was not an advocacy of anything. WTF do you think it ended with the Amadou Diallo incident? Could it possibly be because Gladwell wanted you, the reader, to remember in a particularly striking way the extent to which relying on your gut can go horribly wrong?
December 9th, 2008 at 1:01 am
For what it’s worth, I have trouble with Gladwell for the simple reason that he’s never really struck me a first-rate writer or thinker. Blink read to me like a middling college essay spun out to a full book. Gladwell will spend dozens of pages inelegantly making a point that a guy like, say, Dave Wallace could present perfectly in a footnote. I sort of get the reasons for his best-seller status, but it’s a bit awkward to mention them directly…
December 9th, 2008 at 5:57 am
So the ‘elite’ are arrogant but you apparently believe yourself competent to set the maximum amount of monetary reward someone should get for their efforts. This despite proving yourself thick as shit over and over again on this very blog.
December 9th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Gladwell appears to be a catchy writer who generally makes sense. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to note that there are plenty of really hard working, highly intelligent and skilled people out there who are not wildly successful. It also doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see being in the right time and place can make all the difference in the world. However the combination of the two plus the ability to seize the moment and walk through the open door–the combination is really what passes for talent in this world, and perhaps correctly so. In a blink, Gladwell, an outlier himself, has hit a tipping point of popularity by turning the field of self help literature into something more interesting and closer to people’s sense of actual experience.
December 9th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Matt, I really liked your second last paragraph.
December 9th, 2008 at 10:48 am
In a spiteful sort of way I am glad to find out that I am apparently not the only person in the world to find Malcolm Gladwell’s writing annoying. Gladwell’s strength is his ability to impose structure on disparate facts – like James (”Bloody”) Burke, and like Tom Friedman.
The main strength of Gladwell’s writing is its organization. The fact that the organizational patterns he imposes on his material are somewhat arbitrary has seemingly escaped many people. For Gladwell the patterns come first, the writing later. I prefer a more organic approach to writing, in which the patterns emerge more naturally. This allows me to take the thesis more seriously.
Also, you can skim read Gladwell and not miss much – which is never a good sign.
December 9th, 2008 at 10:52 am
You’re right that the Gladwell “backlash” is surprisingly harsh, given that “Outliers” largely follows the same template as his past two books. But I think that fact likely explains the backlash — after three books and saturation media coverage, people are getting a bit tired of Gladwell’s schtick. At least, that strikes me as a more plausible explanation than that he struck a nerve with successful people.
December 9th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Gladwell was a speaker at a business conference I attended a few years ago. They gave out copies of “Tipping Point,” so I read it on the train. Like others, I was amazed at how stunningly simpleminded it was and how its many breezy anecdotes didn’t always agree with the points he was trying to make. He seemed like a nice guy, but all I can think is “Holy crap. People pay money for such pablum?” He’s like a secular Rick Warren.
December 9th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
The backlash has less to do with the subject it broached, but with people getting used to and sick of the same formula. Wouldn’t you also think that many people, who have entrenched interest in deep analysis would have find similarly harsh reaction to Blink to be equally useful. I think the backlash was building since Blink and finally caught up to him.
Matt’s theory on the solution is like asking why Miami’s Wildcat offense worked in New England, but not in Miami when they played the Pats and surmising that it had to do with the longitude or stadium. No, instead it has more to do with it being figured out. To switch sports analogies, he snuck a fastball past us with The Tipping Point, did it again with Blink, but people got the timing down for Outliers and it got crushed.
December 9th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I’m setting the over/under on the critics on this thread who have actually read Outliers. I’m setting it at 35%. Action?
December 9th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Gladwell is the Dan Brown of nonfiction.
December 9th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
While this sounds nice, reality of more ambiguous. As someone with a passing interest in hockey, the first thing I did when I read reviews of Gladwell’s book was to go to nhl.com and crunch some numbers to test this claim. So far I see no evidence of a relative age effect among the top hockey players in the NHL. Looking at the top 120 scorers for the past several seasons reveals that their birth dates are evenly divided. Perhaps there is a relative age effect on the worst hockey players and it gave then that extra little push to make the cut. But at least among the better players in the NHL (as measured by scoring), there is no evidence of this thesis.
Furthermore, some quick googling of “relative age effect hockey” reveals that the published studies on this topic aren’t exactly uniform. Studies back in the 80’s found a strong effect but more recent studies haven’t.
While I find Gladwell’s writing very entertaining, experiences like this make we wonder, if he’s wrong on this one topic that I actually bothered to spend the effort to dig into, can I trust him on everything else?
December 10th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Haven’t read Outliers, but I agree that Gladwell’s grasp of concepts often appears quite superficial. For that reason, check out “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives” which I have read and unhesitatingly recommend. It touches on a lot of the same ground that Outliers does and supports a number of its conclusions, but is much more authoratitve than anything I’ve seen Gladwell produce. http://www.amazon.com/Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules-Lives/dp/0375424040
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December 12th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
srl/89: “Looking at the top 120 scorers for the past several seasons reveals that their birth dates are evenly divided.”
I think you prove Gladwell’s point. At age 16, the ratio is 4:1 between early and late birthdays – but the kids with the late birthdays have an extra 9-12 months of development, and have always been playing against bigger and stronger competition, so they end up being better players. There’s an “entrenched market inefficiency”, and youth hockey leagues would be well-served to get the kids born in the second half of the year to play more.
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December 18th, 2008 at 10:56 am
статья оказалась очень полезной.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Хорошая статья
Вот только не нашел ссылку на РСС блога?
December 19th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Хорошая статья
Вот только не нашел ссылку на РСС блога?
December 19th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
А есть, какая нибудь альтернатива?
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January 15th, 2009 at 3:03 am
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January 28th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
А газовый конфликт не окончен, а Вы тут всё о своём трёте
February 7th, 2009 at 6:08 am
Добрый день,блогер!!!
У вас на этой заметке текст как абракадабр- исправьте, ато хочется узнать инфу
February 8th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
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February 12th, 2009 at 9:49 am
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February 15th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Это просто супер, я то я уже отчаялся найти. Респекто!!!
February 15th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Предлогаю обменятся ссылочками!!!
February 15th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Тема старая и уже заезжена, но интересно чёрт возьми
February 15th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
February 17th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Сайт достоин уважения. Это лучшее что я видел. Риспект
February 18th, 2009 at 5:52 am
как насчет обмены ссылками сайтов?
February 18th, 2009 at 6:26 am
Мне очень интересно. расскажите подробнее
February 18th, 2009 at 7:04 am
yglesias.thinkprogress.org лучший !!!
Очень благодарен вам за работу…
February 18th, 2009 at 7:31 am
Как всегда выручает нас yglesias.thinkprogress.org
February 18th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Это лучшая тема за етот день что я видел
February 18th, 2009 at 8:42 am
Готова пожертвовать на развитие проекта!
February 18th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Уберите банер на главной который при заходе вылетатет а то он мешает очень
February 18th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Ого скока народу у вас, принимайте еше 1
February 18th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Хороший блог, уже пора добавить его в яндекс директ
February 22nd, 2009 at 8:27 am
yglesias.thinkprogress.org самый лучший! ребят так держать
February 22nd, 2009 at 8:42 am
yglesias.thinkprogress.org поздравляю вас с праздником, всего наилучшего!1
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February 22nd, 2009 at 9:31 am
Как всегда, все самое лучшее. Благодарен!
February 22nd, 2009 at 9:49 am
Подскажите к кому можно обратится за поробностями по данной теме???
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:08 am
Мальчики с праздником вас всех, люблю целую
Еше раз с праздником вас
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:32 am
Почистите коменты, сюда просто не зайти страничка полчаса грузится!
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:53 am
Да да сюда нада поставить хорошую качпу, и все будет отлично, зы с праздником!
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:28 am
Ребят с праздников вас всего вам наилучшего!!! yglesias.thinkprogress.org лучший
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Давайте обменяемся линками на сайты, готов преложить выгодные условия
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:12 pm
http://me-bel.org.ua/
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Это не полная информация, вобше я могу помоч вам наполнять сайт по данной теме если что пишите в асю 6534652
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:09 pm
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February 22nd, 2009 at 2:18 pm
http://novapolitika.ru
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:37 am
http://izmeni-sebya.ru
February 23rd, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Достаточно хорошая тема. ИМХО лучшее что я видел
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Просто нет слов. Материл достоин уважения. Это зе бест
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Афтору риспект. Пости даьше. Рульно получилось
February 24th, 2009 at 6:07 am
Блог захватили спам боты
галактеко в опасносте
February 24th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Что здесь такое происходит, можеьт кто пояснить?
February 24th, 2009 at 8:30 am
Блин после праздника, голова болит ппц, даже читать не могу что то
February 25th, 2009 at 1:13 am
Ох порадовали так порадовали. Это вам тут не шутки
February 25th, 2009 at 1:43 am
Уххх Да блог что надо. Посмотрю еще раз на досуге
February 28th, 2009 at 6:55 am
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