Book Review: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Date Published: November, 2008 (Hardcover)

Pages: 336 (Trade Paper)

“Outliers are those who have been given opportunities –

And have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”

-          Malcolm Gladwell

     Malcolm Gladwell is a former business and science reporter for “The Washington Post” and is now a staff writer for “The New Yorker” magazine.  He has written many best-sellers including The Tipping Point and Blink.  He uses counter-intuitive logic to take new and different looks at our world and how humans interact.  In Outliers Gladwell uses both well-known and obscure stories to explain why certain individuals are super successful or become “outliers” – that is their performance deviates greatly from their cohort.

    

        In the opening chapters the author explains that sociologists feel that success is a result of what they call The Matthews Effect or “accumulative advantage.”  Most folks would feel that the biggest advantage a child could have would be being blessed with above average intelligence or ability. Gladwell contends that IQ is just a threshold and that “practical intelligence” (knowing how to say the right things, what’s appropriate behavior in certain situations, etc…) is just as important.  There are many other factors in play which determine if an individual is to become and “outlier”.  He uses the Canadian National Hockey team as an example of the advantage of birth date.  Because the cutoff birthday for the select youth hockey teams is arbitrarily set at January first, the teams tend to be stacked with kids born in the first few months of each year.  These kids are bigger and more physically mature than children born later in the year in their same grade level.  The players on the select teams then receive better coaching, play more games and eventually become the elite players that go on to receive college scholarships and even play professionally.  Gladwell backs up this contention with real data from the Canadian National Hockey team and the National Hockey League, showing that most of the players have birthdays in January, February or March!

    

     Gladwell then goes on to explain what he calls the “Ten Thousand Hour Rule.”  He contends that in order to perform any skill at the highest “outlier” level, an individual must practice his craft for at least ten thousand hours.  He notes how hard that is to accomplish, not only from a personal commitment standpoint, but also from an opportunity level.  Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time for those ten thousand hours to be attainable.  He uses two examples of this rule coming into play.  The first is Bill Gates, who happened to go to a high school where a “personal computer station” was available  and through family connections was able to access computers at the University of Washington to further hone his passion for software design.  By the time he was a young adult he had his ten thousand hours of computer experience under his belt when none of his contemporaries came even close.  Another fascinating example of this the author uses is The Beatles.  In the late 1950s The Beatles were just one of hundreds of young British bands playing clubs and getting by.  They were hired to play bars in the red light district of Hamburg where they were forced to play eight to ten hours a day, seven days per week.  After several stays in Hamburg, The Beatles had their ten thousand performance hours and rose above their contemporaries in their ability and stage presence.

     

     The author does not neglect the influence of cultural and socio-economic class difference.  He notes that there are different parenting approaches to education.  He expounds on the fact that middle and upper class parents practice a style of “concerned cultivation” of their children, generally being very involved in the child’s education and often extending the learning process at home.  The poorer class tends to utilize a style of “accomplishment of natural growth”, tending to leave the education of their children to the schools themselves and being more “hands off” in their approach.   

    

     Gladwell uses the last half of the book to delve into the factor of cultural influence.  He studies a group of Jewish lawyers who were all born in the era of The Great Depression.  Their parents were all immigrants with strong work ethic who worked exceedingly hard to succeed in the garment industry in New York.  These young men did not have the cultural advantages of their non-Jewish peers, went to lesser law schools (being denied admission to the Ivies because of their ethnicity and religion) and took work that the bigger established firms felt were beneath them.  This work involved corporate mergers and take overs, work the larger firms wouldn’t touch.  Along came the 1970s when these men were approaching their most productive years and the laws changed and corporate work became very important and lucrative.  These lawyers were in the position of having the most experience and over the next several decades prospered greatly, becoming the legal “outliers” of their generation.  Gladwell notes that these men were indeed lucky AND they helped themselves through the rigid work ethic they learned from observing their parents.  “Luck is winning the lottery.  They were given an opportunity and they seized it.”

Movie Review: "Argo" directed by Ben Affleck

"Argo"

Directed by Ben Affleck

 Warner Brothers Pictures

     Argo is a remarkable true story about a dramatic rescue of six Americans during the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979 and 1980.  Ben Affleck directed this tight drama and also stars as Tony Mendez, a CIA specialist in "exfiltration" (removing people from hostile environments).

     The movie opens with a fairly brief summary of the political and historical background which precipitated the Iranian takeover of the U.S Embassy in Teheran. The Iranians, under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeni, held fifty two Americans hostage.  They demanded the return of the deposed Shah of Iran who, suffering from lymphoma, had obtained political asylum in the United States.  Six Americans escaped the embassy during the takeover and hid in the home of the Canadian ambassador.  

     Multiple plans to remove the six isolated hostages were constructed and discarded and finally, in desperation, the CIA turns to Mendez.  He devises an outlandish plot to enter Iran and leave with the six hostages, all posing as a group of Canadians planning to film a "Star Wars" knock-off movie in Iran.  The story moves to Hollywood where Mendez (Affleck) enlists the aid of renowned make-up artist John Chambers (played by John Goodman) and producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) to aid in the ruse.  The audacious plan goes through multiple levels of review, including President Carter and his chief of staff Hamilton Jordan (Kyle Chandler).  The political implications of success vs. failure play heavily in the discussions.

    The movie balances the absolute terror of the hostage situation with humor and the total absurdity of the plan to rescue them.  Alan Arkin is terrific, injecting levity and irony into the nearly impossible situation.  There is also a cinematic balance between the beauty of the city of Teheran and the surrounding Iranian mountains and the horror of the terrorist acts of the Revolutionary Guard. The movie makers have also re-created the look of the late seventies complete with the large eye glasses, the wide lapels and tight jeans.  The soundtrack also lends authenticity to the setting of the era. 

     "Argo", though, is really the story of Tony Mendez and his tremendous heroism  and bravery.  This is a story about prioritizing the safety of others above your own and doing the right thing.  It is a story of a brave and principled man who completes his mission against enormous odds and at great risk to his own safety and well-being.  The courage this man displays is unbelievable.  The skill with which Ben Affleck brings this character to the screen is equally incredible.  Affleck's performances (both as actor and director) are Oscar-worthy.

      I was a young adult during this time period, trying to survive the first years of my surgical residency.  I remember the Iran Hostage Crisis and the impotence that America felt as the situation dragged on for 444 days.  I remember the harsh criticisms of Jimmy Carter and his seeming reluctance to do anything to resolve the crisis, even as this clandestine operation was in place.  The criticism of Carter reached new heights when an attempted military hostage rescue resulted in the loss of eight American servicemen and two aircraft in the Iranian dessert.  Carter's loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election was largely blamed on his perceived lack of leadership during this time.  The hostages were released one hour after Reagan's inauguration.  The film casts new light on the political decision making and behind the scenes actions that were, in fact, taking place.

    "Argo" is a fantastic film, a fascinating recreation of the time period and is also a critically important history lesson.  I recommend it highly.

Book Review: Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Author: Tim Weiner

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Date Published: June, 2007 (Hardcover Edition)

Pages: 848 (Trade Paper Edition, including notes)

This book begins with a quote from 17^th century French literary figure Jean Racine: “There are no secrets that time does not reveal.”  It appears that time, the Freedom of Information Act and author Tim Weiner have revealed many of the most closely kept secrets of CIA.  They also have shattered any myth of competence and exposed the many weaknesses of and abuses of power by CIA in its sixty year history.  Tim Weiner is a respected investigative journalist, having written about American intelligence for “The New York Times” for over twenty years and received a Pulitzer Prize for his work on secret national security programs.

The book is divided by presidential administration, beginning with the founding of CIA under Harry Truman.  The title of the book is derived from a quote by Dwight Eisenhower and summarizes his assessment of the intelligence community’s performance during his administration and what he was leaving for the incoming President, John F. Kennedy.

The purpose for founding CIA was to provide accurate information to the President regarding our enemies as well as allies so that the President and cabinet could then make intelligent foreign policy decisions.  The battle early on was between “information gatherers” and “covert operators”.  Eventually the covert ops advocates took charge, mainly under the influence of the first Director, Allen Dulles.  Covert operations eventually expanded to include fomenting revolution (Guatemala, Haiti, Indonesia and more), assassinations and domestic spying.

Two of the more shocking and frightening parts of the book are the accounts of CIA’s involvement in the assassination of President Diem of South Vietnam under the direction of John and Robert Kennedy as well as the multiple CIA attempts on the life of Fidel Castro.  The book implies that the subsequent assassination of JFK was direct retaliation by Cuba.  CIA knew of contacts between Lee Harvey Oswald and the Cuban embassy in Mexico City in the weeks leading up to November 22, 1963.  Some of this information was withheld from the Warren Commission and many on that Commission were skeptical of their conclusions (including a young representative, Gerald Ford, who was keeping CIA briefed on all of the proceedings).

The second shocking revelation is the outright lies that many Presidents have told the Congress as well as the American people about CIA activities.  These include Dwight Eisenhower lying about U2 spy plane missions over the Soviet Union and Ronald Regan stating unequivocally in his State of the Union message that the United States never supplied arms to Iran when CIA had, in fact, done just that with the full awareness of the Chief Executive. 

Parts of the book read like a Laurel and Hardy comedy.  One example is the U.S. Army aiding and supplying President Sukarno of Indonesia as he fought a coup attempt from his own military which was sponsored by and supplied by CIA.  A second example is the attempts at putting agents on the ground in North Korea during the Korean War.  Every agent dropped into the North was immediately captured and either killed or turned into a double agent within twenty four hours of being deployed. 

The recent intelligence failures regarding Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden and Iraq are all well documented and are the final “mind bogglers” in this narrative.  Although there was a Presidential caveat to eliminate Bin Laden during the Clinton administration, CIA missed opportunity after opportunity because (at least in Mr. Weiner’s opinion) of George Tenet’s reticence.  The fiasco of the cruise missile which was launched to take out a munitions cache in Bosnia and instead destroyed the Chinese embassy was based on faulty CIA intelligence.  The now infamous “unequivocal proof” of the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was based on CIA data from one very unreliable source and came second hand from Germany.  That “intelligence” was also years old when it was given to the White House and used as justification for the invasion of Iraq.  All of the pundits who decry George W. Bush’s domestic surveillance and abuse of personal rights and liberties should understand that this type of thing has been going on since the inception of CIA.  CIA was used for domestic spying in the 50s against suspected communists, in the 60s and 70s against civil rights advocates and the anti-war movement and now against suspected terrorists.

This book is a thorough (605 pages plus 175 pages of notes and footnotes) discussion and explanation of American foreign policy over the last sixty years.  If you haven’t read a newspaper in decades or believe that everything that America does in the world is right and just and motivated by good intentions, this book will shock and infuriate you.  If you are cynical about our representative government and believe that power corrupts, this book will do nothing but support that view.  If you are the least bit paranoid, you probably should not read this book at all.  Let’s hope that future presidents have either read this book or have it next on their “must read” list so that they don’t fall into the same traps and temptations as their predecessors.

Book Review: Gone by Mo Hayder

Gone

Author: Mo Hayder

Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Pages: 416 (NOOK Edition: 396)) 

Publication Date: February 1, 2011 

      Mo Hayder is a British mystery and thriller author who has written eight novels to much acclaim.  Gone is the fifth in a series featuring Detective Jack Caffery and was selected by the Mystery Writers of America as the 2012 Edgar Award Winner for best mystery novel.  I usually tend to agree with the Mystery Writers, but not in this case.

     Gone follows Detective Caffery's investigation of several car-jackings.  These are far from routine auto thefts, however, because in each case a young girl is in the car when it is stolen.  The need to find these children as quickly as possible adds another dimension of tension to an already nerve-wracking story.  There are several sub-plots working here as well which make the plot a bit more involved than it need be.  

     The story is told from Jack Caffery's perspective as he chases down false leads and tries to find connections between the seemingly unrelated crimes.  There are many other characters involved, including other police, parents of the abducted children, witnesses and persons of interest.  Caffery is portrayed as a tortured, lonely soul who labors under the weight of unsolved crimes and feelings of inadequacy.  There isn't much back story to substantiate these feelings except for one unsolved missing celebrity case which he suspects may involve one of his co-workers.  (I haven't read the other four books in this series, so maybe the reasons for Caffery's angst is in those.)  With each new crime in the series the tension is ratcheted up, but a whole new set of players are introduced.  I think the plot is weighted down by too many minor characters.

     The author does a tremendous job of using setting as a method of creating atmosphere and tension.  There is a creepy abandoned wharehouse, a railroad tunnel and lots of lonely English countrysides searched which add a lot to the menacing tone of the entire novel.  Here is one paragraph as an example of this.  A female detective is inspecting an area near where one of the stolen cars had been abandoned:

     "She went to the old water tank where she had been standing and switched off the torch.  She waited for a few quiet moments, surrounded by the monster shapes of the winter trees, beyond them the ploughed fields stretching away, dull, immense and dead.   From somewhere in the distance to her right came the giant sound of a train racing along the Great Western Union Railway, flying through the darkness."

     The strength of this book is the descriptions of setting and place.  The weaknesses, in my opinion, come from too many characters which aren't developed to any great degree, a plot which becomes weighted down by all of these characters and has too many unresolved secondary stories and, finally, a criminal whose motivation doesn't really fit the magnitude of his crimes.  Gone is very worth reading for mystery fans and is much better than more hyped mystery fiction (e.g, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn).  I just don't agree with the Mystery Writers of America that this was the best mystery novel published in 2011.

Book Review: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl

By Gillian Flynn

     This novel has been touted as “one of the best books of the summer” by Amazon.com and was recently called a “publishing phenomenon” by “The Huffington Post”.   This is the third novel for Ms. Flynn.  Her first, Sharp Objects was nominated for and Edgar Award for best first novel in 2007.  I read that one and liked it for its unique main character:  a troubled teenager who suffered self-inflicted lacerations in response to stress and depression.  I decided to read Gone Girl, anticipating from all of the hype that this would be the book that placed this author into the category of a “must-read” author.

     

      Unfortunately, for many reasons, this book just didn’t resonate with me.  The plot is interesting enough, but there are so many improbabilities and ridiculous twists that it quickly becomes pretty unbelievable.   The basic story is that Amy Dunne disappears from her home on her fifth wedding anniversary.  Her husband Nick returns home mid-day and finds the living room in disarray indicating signs of a struggle.  The police are called and an investigation begins.  Nick, of course, becomes suspect #1 (the husband always is).  Nick professes his innocence but inconsistencies in his story and further forensic evidence places him under increasing suspicion.  The story is told in the first person by Nick and Amy in alternating chapters.  Nick tells the story from the disappearance onward and Amy’s chapters are in the form of diary entries relating her flawed marriage.  I’ve never been a fan of flashbacks as a vehicle for back story, especially when it is presented in diary format.  There are other contemporaneous Amy chapters which show a completely different person from the sweet, beautiful, rapturously in-love Amy of the diary entries.  (Plot spoiler: Amy isn’t dead, but the reader figures that out pretty fast.) 

    

      It’s really hard to like any of the characters in this book.  The two main characters are egotistical, manipulating and not trustworthy.  The minor characters are almost cartoonishly stereotypical, including the Barney Fife local police, Nick’s twin sister named Go who helps Nick run a bar (think of Marisa Tomei in “My Cousin Vinny” and you know this character), Amy’s parents who are both child psychologists and made a fortune writing children’s books about a perfect child named (are you ready?) “Amazing Amy” and a Nancy Grace clone who represents all that is bad in tabloid media.

     

     My other problem with this book is the gratuitous use of profanity which just isn’t necessary to tell the story.  I guess the author is trying to accurately display Nick’s frustration levels, but I think that could be conveyed without every other word being an “F-Bomb”.   I also dislike the author constantly telling us what the characters are thinking, rather than showing us through narrative.  This happens a lot in the diary sections but is also prevalent throughout the entire novel.  The resolution of the story is so unrealistic that it is laughable.

     

      If Gone Girl is indeed “one of the best books of the summer” then what a sad summer it is.  After reading this I decided to revisit some classics.  I’m now working through some Ray Bradbury and what a welcome change of pace that has been.  Read Gone Girl if you’re curious, but don’t blame me if you wish you hadn’t.

BOOK REVIEW - Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden

Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden

News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

            Terrorism is not confined to the Middle East and Central Asia.  These two books confirm that one of the most heinous criminals of our time lived in our hemisphere.  The long term impact of this man’s network rivals the devastation of Al-Queda and Osama Bin Laden , although in more insidious and less obvious ways.  These books present two views of the life and career of Pablo Escobar, Colombian smuggler, murderer, extortionist and drug cartel leader.

           

            Killing Pablo by Blackhawk Down author Mark Bowden is a thoroughly researched, journalistic view of the life and career of Pablo Escobar.  The first part is a biography chronicling Pablo’s humble beginnings as an adolescent car thief and minor hoodlum through his ruthless rise to Columbia’s most powerful drug lord.  The author explains how Pablo used bribes, extortion, intimidation and murder to control his government and build an illicit financial empire estimated in the billions of dollars.  The majority of the book examines the role of the United States military and intelligence agencies in finding Escobar and eventually killing him.  The author asks important questions regarding the United States’ obligations in foreign government’s problems that are especially appropriate in light of the events since 9/11/01.

           

             News of a Kidnapping is by Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Love in the Time of Cholera and The General in His Labyrinth are his most famous novels.  Marquez tells the story of Escobar’s reign of terror from a different perspective.  He relates the personal experiences of ten Colombian men and women, nine of whom were journalists, who were kidnapped by Escobar’s bullies and held for ransom and for extortion purposes for months.  Parts of this read like a Keystone Kops movie script or Woody Allen’s “Bananas” since the kidnappers are such inept and drunken stooges.  The harsh reality of the victims’ personal tragedy, however, illuminates just how ruthless and heartless this man Pablo Escobar was.

          

              Each of these books gives valuable insight into the tremendous multifaceted problem of the international drug trade.  The question of how far can one government go to protect its own citizens by controlling or intervening into another country’s internal problems is intriguing.  The most frightening and disturbing aspect of these two books is the revelation of just how much “evil lurks in the hearts of men.”

           

          

Book Review:The Cut by George Pelecanos

The Cut

By George Pelecanos

     George Pelecanos presents a new main character in The Cut.  His name is Spero Lucas and is the adopted son of Greek parents and an Iraqi war veteran.  He lives in his native Washington, D.C. and does private investigator work for an attorney and often takes jobs on the side finding lost objects and receiving a percentage of the recovered property as his “cut.”  Spero is a complicated character.  He is very intelligent as displayed by his reading list, but has no interest in formal education.  He is not a very religious man, but follows the customs of his adopted Greek Orthodox family.  He is violent in his professional life but can be very caring and gentle in his personal life.  He doesn’t seem overly burdened by his war experiences, but remains very loyal to his fellow veterans.  He is, in a word, unique.

   

     In this novel, Spero is hired by Anwan Hawkins, a currently incarcerated drug dealer who is running his business from within the D.C. jail.  Anwan’s has had several bulk deliveries of marijuana stolen and he      wants them back.  These boxes are delivered by UPS to legitimate residential addresses, unbeknownst to the people living there who are usually at work during the day.  They are tracked via the internet and then picked up by two of Anwan’s workers, Tavon Lynch and Edwin Davis.  Several of these deliveries have been hijacked and Anwan hires Spero to figure out who stole the product and to retrieve it or the cash it represents.

     

     Spero begins by interviewing Tavon and Edwin and surveilling the neighborhoods of the deliveries.  He interviews neighbors and finds one teen who was skipping school and saw the UPS box being pilfered.  This witness implicates Tavon and Edwin as well as a metropolitan police officer.  The rest of the story involves Spero digging into and finding out the police who are involved and eventually he uncovers a drug and illegal arms operation running out of an auto body shop in suburban Maryland. 

     

     Pelecanos peppers The Cut with his encyclopedic knowledge of Washington, D.C.  Another trademark Pelecanos touch is the inclusion of multiple food and diner references as well as many musical citations.  These spicey additions add to an already entertaining story.  As usual, this author has crafted a dark view of modern urban living.  I hope that the Spero Lucas series has a long run and look forward to the next installment.