Patrick Thiel, PhD

On the back of the book it says, “How to succeed in any field: develop broad interests and skills.” This perfectly summarizes the content of “Range”, the book by David Epstein. Through the lens of the stories of different people from different backgrounds – be it scientists, athletes, or inventors – the author highlights how these people achieved success by choosing a different path than those around them – they went off the beaten path and acquired skills that, at first, often seemed unrelated to their profession. These skills gave these individuals depth and ultimately led them to outshine their peers.

In summary, I think the book’s advice boils down to trying all kinds of things, because you never know when some of the skills and habits you learn while trying things out might be useful for (completely) unrelated tasks.

What I liked

For me personally, the value of the book is exactly what I summarized above, reading about people who have a lot of different interests and are still successful. I could relate to this the most because I feel like sometimes I have too many interests and it hurts my future prospects. It was also inspiring to read about people starting over.

What I did not like

At times it felt like too many examples were chained together. The author listed so many people who accomplished a certain task, reached a certain conclusion, or ended up in a certain career that you could forget the main point of the paragraph or chapter. Sometimes it felt like reading a Wikipedia article because of the dense information presented.

My favorite quote

You have to carry a big basket to bring something home. An open mind will take something home from every experience.

Interesting fact

My physical copy of the book is called “Range – How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World,” but I recently checked the book online and it was called “Range – Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World,” which is only a subtle difference, but still a difference.