Outsiders: the Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Usually success stories begin with the poor, down-on-luck person who, though faced with daunting obstacles, rise above the common man and become the elite. They pull themselves up by their bootstraps and eventually make it. But Gladwell digs deeper: he looks at the similarities between Bill Gates, Bill Joy, and the Beatles; why Korean Air suffered so many crashes and then turned itself around; and what successful New York lawyers have in common. He sees why the world's smartest man never finished college. He sees that peoples' environments, culture, and, more importantly, what they do with these things, are what make true outliers.

I didn't really get the point of this book until I talked with Dad, who had already read it. I thought that the message was that these successful people were given unexpected advantages, and that's what made them. That's true, but it's not all: Bill Gates was given the advantage of a world-class computer lab in middle school, and he took it. He spent every spare moment in that lab, and as a result had the know-how to created Microsoft.
It hits home. In almost everything, I am either good enough to get by or do just enough work to make it. I rarely 'work hard'. Even if I had the highest IQ on the planet, if I keep it up I might be just like Chris Langan, who could have had a Ph.D at seventeen but didn't persevere.
There is hope, though. After all, Korean Air, after nearly closing down, is now a respected airline. It was terrible, but the crews and pilots took the time to figure out their problems and work really hard at fixing them. I'm trying to keep this mindset, and hopefully it will lead to a better, more God-centered, more 'successful' me.