Malcolm Gladwell

His curly hair attracted a lot of negative attention from the police who began charging him speeding tickets for no apparent reason, which Gladwell cites in one of his works.

Malcolm T. Gladwell was born to Joyce and Graham Gladwell in Fareham, Hampshire, England. His mother is a psychotherapist and his father; a mathematics professor.

When he was 6-years-old, the family moved to Ontario, Canada. He was always very academically focused and would spend time reading and researching in libraries.

When he was in high school, he was also very athletic and was involved in middle-distance running. He also won a title at the Ontario High School in 1978.

In 1982, he was an intern at the National Journalism Center in Washington D.C. Around the same time; he was majoring in history and graduated from the University of Toronto two years later.

Since his grades were not very good, he did not get a spot in graduate school. He finally accepted a journalism position at ‘The American Spectator’ and moved to Indiana for the job.

In 1987, he began covering news pertaining to business and science for ‘The Washington Post’, where he worked for almost a decade, quitting in 1996.

After he quit working for ‘The Washington Post’, he began work with ‘The New Yorker’, where his first assignment was to write a piece about fashion. Instead of writing about fashion, he chose to write about a man who produced t-shirts, which he found more interesting to write.

In 1996, he shot to fame with two articles that he wrote for ‘The New Yorker’; ‘The Tipping Point’ and ‘The Coolhunt’. These two articles became the basis for his first novel, ‘The Tipping Point’, which was written four years later.

In 2002, he wrote an article for ‘The New Yorker’ based on the concept of ‘The Talent Myth’. This article directly appraised the administrative techniques that successful people used and vice versa.

In 2005, he authored his second book, ‘Blink’. Three years later, he published his third work, ‘Outliers’, which is a book about how an individual’s success is related to personal determination and inspiration.

‘The Tipping Point’, published in 2000 is regarded as his best-known works. This went on to become an international best-seller and was named as one of the ‘best books of the decade’ by Amazon.com customers, ‘The Guardian’, ‘The Times’ and ‘The A.V. Club’.

‘Blink’, which was published in 2005 was an international best-seller and was included in the Fast Company’s list of ‘Best Business Books of 2005’. Combined with ‘The Tipping Point’, both the books sold nearly 4.5 million copies around the world.

‘Outliers’ was published in 2008 and spent approximately 11 weeks in the number 1 position on ‘The New York Times’ list and was also included in Times’ list of ‘best non-fiction books of 2008’.