I’ve read several devastating reviews of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest in the past few weeks, but Carol Tavris ( TLS , 2/20) takes the prize. She identifies the main problem with Gladwell’s work as the “except when it doesn’t” problem. She writes,

“the premiss of Outliers: The story of success is that ‘extraordinary’ success depends on culture, circumstances, demographics and chance, except when it also depends on talent, willingness to break rules, imagination and risk-taking. Success depends on being in the right place at the right time, except for all those other people who were in the same place at the same time and didn’t notice that the time was right.”