Walt was the quintessential American entrepreneur, at a classical point in time. He started in a budding new field and worked assiduously. He survived Depression, War, business screw-overs and labor troubles. He didn't diversify randomly, but organically. He didn't seek to become a Shadow Bank, but to provide something of lasting value to the culture of the world. He was an artist, AND commercially successful. He didn't go to business school. He worked, hard.

Walt was an Outlier. I have bought the book, and read one chapter so far, and on the strength of that one chapter, I highly recommend not only Outlier, but the author Malcolm Gladwell's previous books, which it appears that everyone but me has read, including the Younger Kid. Sheesh! You'd think my own flesh and blood could have mentioned this amazing author to me!

If I had a dream, it was to live a life of success after success, like Walt Disney, if not on such a grand scale. Instead of a grand narrative that blankets an era, my own life story is rather like a Perils of Pauline patchwork quilt, without any hero. It would make unbelievable reading--if I were willing to relive all that to write it down, which I'm not.

The patchwork quilt is a far more common life-pattern these days than ever, for men and women, and I blame it on modern American business schools, which believe that change for the sake of change is worth big bucks and bonuses, no matter what is destroyed in the process. I'm not unique--we all have shared bits of our travails--and we've collected data on other lives. Before, change was God's Will: pestilence, weather, war, untimely death. Big Business had a hand in all that, but it wasn't so blatantly in your face. And more often than not, Big Business destroyed itself when it sought to destroy others, just as a thousand years earlier, Big Religion did itself in. Criminals weren't institutions.

That has since changed. With the nearly complete takeover of government, Big Business is immortal as well as immoral. Where Big Business will take us, we don't want to go. This is the defining battle of the new century, and we are just at the beginning. Because change happens so fast these days, we may actually get to see the end of it, in our lifetimes. I hope so, anyway.