(Current, $27)
Malcolm Gladwell fans, prepare for disappointing news, said Bryant Urstadt in Bloomberg Businessweek. David Epstein of Sports Illustrated has sifted through the latest science for his new book on athletic achievement, and his findings essentially refute Gladwell’s electrifying contention, made in the 2008 book Outliers, that 10,000 hours of practice is all that separates any of us from mastery of virtually any skill. Epstein clearly hates to emphasize training’s limitations. Even so, “The Sports Gene is an implicit—and, in one chapter, explicit—refutation of the 10,000-hour benchmark,” and it makes sobering reading for anyone who hopes to achieve superiority in sports, music, or even chess simply by outworking the competition.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Epstein never does provide a simple conclusion about the relative importance of talent and training, said Alex Hutchinson in The Globe and Mail (Canada). The Sports Gene “doesn’t leave you with the satisfying click of clarity and enlightenment that you get after reading something by, say, Jonah Lehrer.” But that’s a point in the book’s favor. Unlike Lehrer and many other writers of general-interest science books, Epstein refuses to cherry-pick research evidence. In the end, the picture of athletic greatness we get in The Sports Gene proves “fascinating and humblingly complex”—just like the world that the book aims to describe.
-
Judge issues injunction on DHS use of forceSpeed Read Agents can only use force under the ‘immediate threat of physical harm’
-
How Tesla has put Elon Musk on track to be the world’s first trillionaireIn The Spotlight The package agreed by the Tesla board outlines several key milestones over a 10-year period
-
Cop30: is the UN climate summit over before it begins?Today’s Big Question Trump administration will not send any high-level representatives, while most nations failed to submit updated plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”