Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

Epstein's basic argument is that focus on early specialization is unwarranted. Starting in the world of sports he contrasts Tiger Woods (who specialized early as a golfer) with Roger Federer (who was much later to focus on tennis) and argues that when he looks more broadly at successful people, they "seemed to have more Roger than Tiger in their development stories".[1] He then argues that while specialization is useful for kind problems in closed predictable environments like a chess game or playing music, the modern world is characterized by wicked problems which requires us to deal with a new situation where we can't rely on perfecting from known experience. As he puts it: "And that is what a rapidly changing, wicked world demands - conceptual reasoning skill that can connect new ideas and work across contexts".[2] He then expands on this general idea to argue that range, combining knowledge and experience from multiple fields and late specialization is a better focus than early specialization. The argument can be seen as a response to Malcolm Gladwell's idea of the 10,000-Hour Rule that argues for early specialization.[3]

The book received a positive review in the New York Times that wrote "Although the book unfolds according to a formula that has become familiar — story, study, lesson; rinse and repeat — the storytelling is so dramatic, the wielding of data so deft and the lessons so strikingly framed that it’s never less than a pleasure to read".[4] The book was also shortlisted (as one of six books) for the McKinsey and Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award.[5]