Review: Stiffed

Title: Stiffed Updated Edition: The Roots of Modern Male Rage

Author: Susan Faludi

Genre: Sociology

Trigger Warnings: Misogyny, violence, rape (mentions), sexual content (mentions), sex work, infidelity, domestic abuse, fundamentalist Christian patriarchy, war

Back Cover:

In 1991, internationally renowned feminist journalist Susan Faludi ignited a revival of the women’s movement with her revelatory investigative reportage: Backlash was nothing less than a landmark, uncovering an “undeclared war” against women’s equality in the media, advertising, Hollywood, the workplace, and government—a war that is still being fought today.

Stiffed may be even more essential than Backlash to understanding the cultural riptides that led to Trumpian America. Here, Faludi turns her attention to the so-called “Angry Male” politics plaguing the nation. Through deeply researched, nuanced, and empathetic character studies of distressed industrial workers, laid-off aerospace engineers, combat veterans, football fans, evangelical husbands, suburban and inner-city teenage boys, and Hollywood and porn actors, Stiffed goes beyond the easy explanations of male misbehavior—that it’s driven by chromosomes or hormones—to lay bare the powerful social and economic forces that have shattered the postwar compact defining American manhood. Faludi’s vivid storytelling illuminates the historic and traumatic paradigm shift from a “utilitarian” manliness, grounded in civic and communal service, to an “ornamental” masculinity shaped by entertainment, marketing, and performance values.

Read in the light of Trumpian politics and the #MeToo movement, Faludi’s analysis speaks acutely to our present crisis, and to a foreboding future. Stiffed delivers a searing portrait of modern-day male America, and traces the provenance of a gender war that continues to rage, unabated.

Review:

If you read Susan Faludi’s book Backlash and asked, “What about the men?” fear not – there’s a book for you, too. That book is Stiffed, and it explores why men these days are so angry.

And from everything she talks about in this book, I understand. Even though this book discusses some of the horrible things men do out of their anger, overall it inspired a lot of compassion in me. Susan is vocally a feminist, and this was a balanced book in that it holds a great compassion and understanding for the plight of men in modern society while maintaining that what’s hurting these men is not women getting more rights but a system that is also rigged against them, just in different ways.

This book is over two decades old. Some of it aged well, some of it didn’t. The research she did into the Promise Keepers Christian men’s group felt like it could have been done just a few months ago. Other topics felt severely outdated. Though some Gen X men appear in analyses of some topics, most of this book focuses on the Baby Boomer generation. Susan describes them as raised by parents who lived through WWII in the era of post-war prosperity and who faced the Vietnam War and its associated draft. My parents were five years old when the Vietnam War ended. This generation is my grandparents’ generation. Though it was an interesting look at the circumstances surrounding Baby Boomers’ rise to adulthood, I have to wonder how relevant it is to the men of my and my parents’ generations.

The main ideas in this book seem to be that men are disconnected – from their own emotions, from deep connections with other men, from their fathers, and from a feeling of competence and mastery – and that manhood in the modern world is largely ornamental. Men are forced into ever-more-unattainable roles by the forces of marketing and consumerism. Being a man is no longer about doing but about appearing – the male role has shifted from producer to consumer. There’s an undercurrent of the idea that masculinity is about doing things with your hands, and I don’t know how accurate that is, but the idea of image-based “ornamental masculinity” seems spot-on.

I do wish Susan had either spent more time on the effects of technology in the updated prologue or added an updated epilogue as well. She uses the examples of aspiring male porn stars and men’s magazines to discuss the emphasis on image and appearance for men, and I would really like to know how social media and the rise of the Instagram influencer has affected those trends.

I want to keep talking about the different topics in this book, because even the parts that didn’t seem particularly relevant to 2022 (or relevant to anything – a good two hours in audiobook time was spent on a detailed history of the Cleveland Browns) were interesting. I can sometimes lose patience with a 10-hour audiobook, but this 30-hour monstrosity took me three work days to finish and had me engaged the whole time. Even the parts that seem specific to the 1990s are fascinating.

Part of me wishes Susan would fully update the contents of this book for the 2020s. However, the more realistic part of me recognizes that for her to cover everything relevant, she’d basically need to rewrite the entire book. As awesome as I think that would be, it’s a lot to ask. In the meantime, there’s still a lot to be gained from Stiffed and it is absolutely worth the read.

Review: Pure

Title: Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free

Author: Linda Kay Klein

Genre: Memoir/Sociology/Religion

Trigger Warnings: Sexual content, sexual assault, rape, pedophilia, child sexual abuse, incest, religious trauma, religious bigotry, homophobia, body shaming, medical content

Back Cover:

From a woman who has been there and back, the first inside look at the devastating effects evangelical Christianity’s purity culture has had on a generation of young women—in a potent combination of journalism, cultural commentary, and memoir.

In the 1990s, a “purity industry” emerged out of the white evangelical Christian culture. Purity rings, purity pledges, and purity balls came with a dangerous message: girls are potential sexual “stumbling blocks” for boys and men, and any expression of a girl’s sexuality could reflect the corruption of her character. This message traumatized many girls—resulting in anxiety, fear, and experiences that mimicked the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—and trapped them in a cycle of shame.

This is the sex education Linda Kay Klein grew up with.

Fearing being marked a Jezebel, Klein broke up with her high school boyfriend because she thought God told her to, and took pregnancy tests though she was a virgin, terrified that any sexual activity would be punished with an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. When the youth pastor of her church was convicted of sexual enticement of a twelve-year-old girl, Klein began to question the purity-based sexual ethic. She contacted young women she knew, asking if they were coping with the same shame-induced issues she was. These intimate conversations developed into a twelve-year quest that took her across the country and into the lives of women raised in similar religious communities—a journey that facilitated her own healing and led her to churches that are seeking a new way to reconcile sexuality and spirituality.

Review:

I went into this book going, “I had no guilt or shame having premarital sex after I left Christianity, so it will be interesting to read about other people’s experiences but I’m not going to get swamped with feelings like I did with other similar books.” And if you want to take a moment to chuckle at the naïveté, go ahead, because somehow I had entirely forgotten that purity culture was about so much more than “premarital sex is bad.”

This book is a combination of sociology and memoir. Linda starts each section with an extended story from her own life, but continues with interviews she did with other people who grew up in purity culture (some of whom are still Christian, some of whom aren’t) and ties it all together with a narrative of the problems purity culture causes. If you’re familiar with autoethnography, it feels like one that’s just written for a general readership instead of an academic one.

For being as short as it is (the audiobook is only 9 hours), it packs a lot into its pages, and yet still feels like there is tons more to say on the topic. Which there probably is – purity culture is a broad topic that’s hurt a lot of people and there’s no way anyone could cover all the nuances in one book, even if that book was twice as long as Pure. Though an insider like me can point out all the nuances Linda missed, she did a really good job portraying the major factors and making the ideas accessible to people outside purity culture.

There are a lot of intense feelings and traumas in these pages, but also a lot of revelations for me as someone who grew up in purity culture. Linda’s example of her struggle with Crohn’s disease was especially revelatory in how her physical suffering redeemed her evil body (which had developed undeniable hips and breasts and therefore was unquestionably Sexual and therefore Evil) and made her good in the eyes of her church.

This book is a lot. It’s intense and full of trauma, body shaming, and little girls being sexualized so they can be shamed for that sexualization. But it is very well-written and the stories contained well-told, and it strikes a good balance between being relatable and helpful to the purity culture survivor and accessible to the purity culture outsider. This is a very worthwhile book.

Review: Range

Title: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

Author: David Epstein

Genre: Sociology

Trigger Warnings: Death (mentions), injury (mentions)

Back Cover:

Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you’ll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.

David Epstein examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields–especially those that are complex and unpredictable–generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see.

Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.

Review:

I am less than a quarter-century old, and I have a lot of experiences. I’ve published short stories in literary magazines, danced ballet en pointe, founded two businesses, and tried and left four religions. I’m teaching myself herbalism, Arabic, violin, and major world religions, and my resume includes a CNA license, forklift experience, web design, and running a commercial farm. But I couldn’t be called an expert in anything, or even more than an advanced beginner in most things.

In short, I’m a generalist. And since I was old enough to realize I didn’t have a single unequivocal answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I’ve felt like I’m behind. I have not spent my entire life devoted to a single area of knowledge, I chose my college degree specifically because it was general and I could do almost anything with it, and my interests are so disparate that I can’t focus on just one thing without ignoring whole categories of things I enjoy.

I provide all this context not just because I like talking about myself (although I do), but to give some context for the emotional connection I felt towards this book. The main idea of Range is that early specialization does help for some fields, like chess, but for many areas, a “sampling period” where you try a bunch of different and unrelated things and specializing later once you find (through trial and error) what really speaks to you results in better creativity and skill in your field of specialization. And the book backs it up with hundreds of pages of studies and examples of late specialization leading to amazing skill, from Roger Federer to Vincent Van Gogh.

Range definitely isn’t perfect. Some of the examples meander until I lost the point or only seem tangentally relevant, the epilogue was almost entirely unnecessary, and I think it could stand to be at least 50 pages shorter. But I was very forgiving of all of that while reading because it told me I’m not hopelessly behind and gave me the science to prove it. If you are a generalist, feel like you’re behind and won’t ever catch up because you haven’t been practicing a skill since age three, or still don’t know what you want to be when you grow up even though you officially are “grown up,” this book will be an incredibly valuable read.

Review: True Enough

Title: True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society

Author: Farhad Manjoo

Genre: Current Issues/Sociology

Trigger Warnings: Racial slurs (mentions), bigotry (mentions), death of children

Back Cover:

Why has punditry lately overtaken news? Why do lies seem to linger so long in the cultural subconscious even after they’ve been thoroughly discredited? And why, when more people than ever before are documenting the truth with laptops and digital cameras, does fact-free spin and propaganda seem to work so well? True Enough explores leading controversies of national politics, foreign affairs, science, and business, explaining how Americans have begun to organize themselves into echo chambers that harbor diametrically different facts—not merely opinions—from those of the larger culture.

Review:

I am really tired of these misleading titles (or subtitles, as the case may be) that promise something actionable but are really just about how and why things got this way (e.g. How to Do Nothing, anything by Malcolm Gladwell). This is not a book about “Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society,” it’s a book about how society got to the point where facts and reality are debatable.

It is a really fascinating piece of sociological work. How did we get to the point where scientists and experts nearly unanimously say that climate change is real and human-caused, but the public debate is not about what to do about it but whether these facts are actual facts? Farhad Manjoo explores ideological echo chambers, conspiracy theories, human psychology, and the perfect storm of modern society that puts even long-established facts like “the earth is round” up for debate.

It’s not at all a bad book. In fact, it is rather fascinating, and if you go in expecting to get a sociological study on why in the heck our society is like this, you’ll probably enjoy it immensely. I just went in expecting to learn how to live in a post-fact society, and that’s not at all what I got. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret the read and I learned a lot, but it was not what I expected.

Review: The Authoritarians

Title: The Authoritarians

Author: Bob Altemeyer

Genre: Current Issues/Society

Trigger Warnings: Discussion of bigoted and violent attitudes and mindsets, including homophobia and racism

Back Cover:

Bob Altemeyer studied authoritarianism for forty years, and The Authoritarians is the most comprehensive report of his findings available. It was written for non scientists in the relaxed, conversational style that drove various editors to painful deaths over the years.

Review:

This book came highly recommended by my favorite ex-Christian blogger, plus it was free online. And considering my background, I thought even if it wasn’t interesting, it should at least be valuable.

It was interesting, though, and a remarkably easy read despite all the research and science it contains. Bob Altemeyer presents his decades of research on authoritarian followers and leaders and uses that research to interpret high-authoritarian groups (like religious fundamentalists and the politically conservative) and societal phenomena. He is careful to point out that being fundamentalist or conservative doesn’t necessarily mean you’re authoritarian (leader or follower) and the book isn’t a judgement on either group, his research just found a higher concentration of authoritarians in both groups.

This book was interesting to me because I grew up in a religious fundamentalist family and was raised to be a good authoritarian follower, and even though I don’t want to be authoritarian I still find a lot of those tendencies lurking in my brain. This isn’t really a book to help you get rid of those, but it’s very helpful to start to identify them.

Even if you don’t come from that kind of background, though, I think this is still a valuable book for understanding the authoritarian mindset and gaining some insight into current events, especially in the aftermath of a Trump presidency.

You can get a copy of the book here.

Review: How to Do Nothing

Title: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Author: Jenny Odell

Genre: Sociology/Philosophy

Trigger Warnings: Racism (mention), sexism (mention), destruction of environment, seizure (mention)

Back Cover:

This thrilling critique of the forces vying for our attention re-defines what we think of as productivity, shows us a new way to connect with our environment and reveals all that we’ve been too distracted to see about our selves and our world.

When the technologies we use every day collapse our experiences into 24/7 availability, platforms for personal branding, and products to be monetized, nothing can be quite so radical as… doing nothing. Here, Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process.

Review:

I hate the title of this book, because How to Do Nothing has very little to do with how to do nothing. Why to Do Nothing would be slightly more accurate, but still misleading, because this book is not about “doing” at all, even doing nothing. It’s not a how-to guide in any sense, and in many senses it’s not even about doing nothing.

More than anything, this is a work of philosophy. It’s about context and temporality and how the modern world strips us of both. It’s about art, perception, communication, community, the destructive nature of capitalism, and birdwatching. It offers no how-tos and very few whys. The experience of reading it seemed very much like reading a long and rambling philosophy essay about how capitalism is commodifying attention, the value of art, the possibilities and benefits of changing your perception, how much humans need community, and the importance of seeing and experiencing nature.

I didn’t dislike this book. In fact, I enjoyed it a lot. It’s the first book in this vein I’ve read that acknowledges that capitalism is the underlying problem here. Even though it reads like a long and rambling philosophy essay, it’s highly engaging and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The only practical tips are those that the author talks about working for her, but read it like a personal journey and a work of philosophy and you’ll get a lot out of it. But whatever you think you’re going to get from a book titled How to Do Nothing, it’s not what you’re getting at all.

Review: Class

Title: Class: A Guide Through the American Status System

Author: Paul Fussell

Genre: Sociology

Trigger Warnings: Classism, sexual terminology

Back Cover:

The bestselling, comprehensive, and carefully researched guide to the ins-and-outs of the American class system with a detailed look at the defining factors of each group, from customs to fashion to housing.

Based on careful research and told with grace and wit, Paul Fessell shows how everything people within American society do, say, and own reflects their social status. Detailing the lifestyles of each class, from the way they dress and where they live to their education and hobbies, Class is sure to entertain, enlighten, and occasionally enrage readers as they identify their own place in society and see how the other half lives.

Review:

I expected a lot more social justice out of this, and that’s not what I got at all. This is more in the line of David Brooks (or perhaps I should say David Brooks is in the line of this, since this book was published well before Brooks’ works) – a work of sociology and observation.

And classism. Paul obviously is (or thinks he is) one of the upper classes in his nine-class system, because the writing is full of snobbery and disdain. Sure, the phenomena he describes are interesting, but any time he discusses anyone below upper-middle class, you can practically see him turning up his nose and saying “and this is what the lower classes do” with a disdainful sniff.

It’s even hard for me to determine what is actually accurate about his observations, because this book was published in the early nineties. So much has changed in technology and society since Class was published that quite a bit of what Paul talks about doesn’t apply to anyone anymore. I think my parents are upper middle by his definitions, but it’s hard to tell. When I tried the judgement scale based on what’s in their living room, Paul had me subtract two class points for not having visible ashtrays.

Some of it actually was interesting, though. A couple chapters (notably the one on dressing habits) helped me pinpoint some of the subconscious details you pick up on to judge a person’s class. And even though it was hard to tell what was relevant when it came to media and home decor and the like, it was still an interesting (if not completely relevant) look at class indicators in the 80s/early 90s.

Class was not what I had expected or hoped for, and Paul is insufferably snobby, but I wouldn’t say the book was bad. Irrelevant, maybe; classist, definitely; but at least entertaining to read.

Review: Bullshit Jobs

Title: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

Author: David Graeber

Genre: Sociology

Trigger Warnings: None

Back Cover:

Be honest: if your job didn’t exist, would anybody miss it? Have you ever wondered why not? Up to 40% of us secretly believe our jobs probably aren’t necessary. In other words: they are bullshit jobs. This book shows why, and what we can do about it.

In the early twentieth century, people prophesied that technology would see us all working fifteen-hour weeks and driving flying cars. Instead, something curious happened. Not only have the flying cars not materialised, but average working hours have increased rather than decreased. And now, across the developed world, three-quarters of all jobs are in services, finance or admin: jobs that don’t seem to contribute anything to society. In Bullshit Jobs, David Graeber explores how this phenomenon – one more associated with the Soviet Union, but which capitalism was supposed to eliminate – has happened. In doing so, he looks at how, rather than producing anything, work has become an end in itself; the way such work maintains the current broken system of finance capital; and, finally, how we can get out of it.

This book is for anyone whose heart has sunk at the sight of a whiteboard, who believes ‘workshops’ should only be for making things, or who just suspects that there might be a better way to run our world.

Review:

What’s ironic is that I read this book entirely while I was at work. What’s sad is that while reading this, I realized I’ve only had one job in my life (waitress) that wasn’t a bullshit job. On the bright side, I feel less bad about goofing off on jobs where I don’t have enough work to fill an entire day.

Let me back up.

David Graeber makes the argument in this book that there are millions of white-collar jobs that should not exist, and the people who hold these jobs know it – he calls these jobs bullshit jobs. These are jobs that provide no benefit to society, often exist because of unnecessary bureaucracy, and frequently don’t have enough tasks to keep them busy for a full eight-hour day.

The book is peppered with footnotes. Many of them are simply side points that Graeber wanted to make but that didn’t fit into his main text, but some of them do cite actual research. Most of the book, though, is based on the testimonies of and interviews with people who hold various types of bullshit jobs. You hear the stories of people all over the world, in their own words, about how their jobs are useless and soul-sucking.

While I can’t speak from that angle (I don’t know a lot of people, let alone people open enough to talk about their bullshit job experience), I can definitely say that what Graeber talks about rings true to me. I work in marketing (a job that provides negative value to society, according to calculations in the book), and I have never had a marketing job that filled more than an hour or two per day. And yet at each job, I have tried to look busy the whole day, as some sort of unspoken social contract that my boss is paying for my time so I have to pretend to give it to them.

The first five chapters explained and dissected the phenomenon of bullshit jobs, and they were fascinating and engaging. I devoured them. Chapter six was dense, about the history of work, and though the topic was interesting, it took me a while to get through. Chapter seven actually suggested a solution to the bullshit jobs phenomenon (although making it clear that this book is about the phenomenon, not the solution).

If you have a bullshit job, or think you might have a bullshit job, this is an excellent book to read. You’ll gain some insight into the problem, why it happens, and why it keeps happening. You might end up understanding why people are dissatisfied with “great” jobs a little more than you’d expected.

Review: Bobos in Paradise

Title: Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There

Author: David Brooks

Genre: Sociology

Trigger Warnings: None

Back Cover:

Do you believe that spending $15,000 on a media center is vulgar, but that spending $15,000 on a slate shower stall is a sign that you are at one with the Zenlike rhythms of nature? Do you work for one of those visionary software companies where people come to work wearing hiking boots and glacier glasses, as if a wall of ice were about to come sliding through the parking lot? If so, you might be a Bobo.

In his bestselling work of “comic sociology,” David Brooks coins a new word, Bobo, to describe today’s upper class–those who have wed the bourgeois world of capitalist enterprise to the hippie values of the bohemian counterculture. Their hybrid lifestyle is the atmosphere we breathe, and in this witty and serious look at the cultural consequences of the information age, Brooks has defined a new generation.

Review:

I read this book back in high school – it was one of the texts for my AP Sociology class. And I enjoyed it so much that I kept it after the class was over. Lately I’ve been wanting to reread it, so here we are.

This is mainly a sociological text examining the phenomenon of “bourgeois bohemians.” Brooks calls them “Bobos,” I explain them to people who ask what this book is about as “basically hipsters.” Because that’s pretty much what they are, with their “natural/rustic is better” aesthetic and their love of things that are new but look old and their willingness to pay lots of money for handmade/organic/artisan versions of normally cheap things. Brooks’ name for them comes from the way they developed as a blend of the bourgeois capitalist upper class and the artistic bohemian counterculture.

Brooks and I differ on what we consider “upper class,” though. What Brooks describes as upper class in this book is what I think of as upper middle class. Upper class is, to me, people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk – people who have so much money they can’t think of anything better to do with it than buy politicians or shoot luxury cars into space. Whereas the people who Brooks describes are making $100,000+ per year and have debt from living beyond their means. Which sounds more upper middle class than middle class to me.

I’m also not sure how accurate this book is anymore. It was published in 2000, and while I can still see some of the things Brooks points out (especially in the area of cultural values), some of the things he says don’t seem applicable these days. Notably the chapter on politics – Brooks’ point in that section is that Bobos are more moderate and shy away from any sort of radicalism or anything that’s too ideological or dogmatic. And looking at the current state of American politics and our hyperconservative, highly ideological, highly dogmatic current administration, it’s pretty easy to see that that is not true.

Accurate or not, though, Bobos in Paradise is still a highly interesting (and entertaining) read and gives a glimpse of a lifestyle that seems simultaneously hypocritical and desirable. If you’re looking for insight into today’s world, this might not be the best place for you to go, but if you want to learn about hipsters and where the upper middle class was headed in the early 2000s, this book will be an enjoyable place to get your information.

Review: Outliers

Title: Outliers: The Story of Success

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Genre: Sociology

Trigger Warnings: Racism

Back Cover:

There is a story that is usually told about extremely successful people, a story that focuses on intelligence and ambition. Gladwell argues that the true story of success is very different, and that if we want to understand how some people thrive, we should spend more time looking around them-at such things as their family, their birthplace, or even their birth date. And in revealing that hidden logic, Gladwell presents a fascinating and provocative blueprint for making the most of human potential.

In The Tipping Point Gladwell changed the way we understand the world. In Blink he changed the way we think about thinking. In Outliers he transforms the way we understand success.

Review:

I almost started this review by saying I had low expectations for this book, but that’s not really true – I didn’t have really any expectations for this book. I picked it up mainly because it was an audiobook, I’d had it on my reading list for years, and his other book The Tipping Point was okay. I didn’t expect to be thrilled, but I also didn’t expect to be let down.

Outliers surprised me.

Of course, I have the same complaint with Outliers as I did with The Tipping Point – it’s not very practical. It explores the path to success for lots of people (including Bill Gates, hockey players, a New York lawyer, and a middle schooler from the Bronx), but it doesn’t explain how to become a success (or predict if you or someone else will become one). But also, there’s kind of a reason for that.

You know the American idealism of “if you work hard enough you’ll succeed”? In Outliers, Gladwell surrounds that concept with a ton of TNT and lights the fuse.

His entire premise with this book is that success takes hard work, but it also takes being born into or being given a particular set of circumstances that make all the difference. For example:

• Bill Gates was born at the right time so he was a teenager when computers started appearing in universities and businesses and had wealthy parents who could send him to an elite private school that got a computer – therefore enabling him to have a ridiculous amount of practice with and understanding of computers by the time he dropped out of college.
• Canadian hockey players are unlikely to succeed if they’re born April through December, because the league cutoff date is January 1 and players born at the beginning of the year are slightly older (and therefore bigger, more coordinated, and better) when it comes time to pick the best players for better training in elementary school.
• Lawyer Joseph Flaum was born to immigrant parents who had been in America long enough to afford send him to law school, but was Jewish so unable to get a job at a big law firm – so he started his own firm taking acquisitions cases that no one else would take, and when acquisitions suddenly became a big business he and his firm were already on top.
• And Chris Langan, one of the smartest people in the world by IQ, who spent most of his life working as a bouncer in a New York bar and never finished college – because he came from a low-income background and never learned how to negotiate with authority to get what he needed.

Though it’s not labeled as such, Outliers is really about how privilege affects success and how the circumstances of your birth influence the rest of your life. Though it doesn’t touch much on race or gender, if you want to start exploring class privilege and its effects, this is a good book to start with. And if you want to know why higher classes seem to get ahead faster with less work, despite America’s “work hard and you’ll succeed” idealism, definitely give it a read.

(A note on the trigger warning: I honestly didn’t see racism in the book, but I am white. It was pointed out to me during an anthropology class a couple years ago that Gladwell’s treatment of Koreans in chapter 7 is racist, so I listed that as a trigger.)