'A goldmine of surprising insights. Makes you smarter with every page' - James Clear, author of Atomic Habits
The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller. As featured on Diary of a CEO.
The essential guide to improving your performance, and a powerful playbook for success in any field: develop range while everyone around you is rushing to specialize.
You may have been taught that success in any field requires early specialization, and 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. If you only dabble or delay, you'll never catch up with those who got a head start. This is completely wrong.
In this landmark book, David Epstein shows you that the way to succeed is by sampling widely, gaining a breadth of experiences, taking detours, experimenting relentlessly and juggling many interests.
Studying the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors and scientists, Epstein demonstrates how generalists often find their path relatively late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one.
Range has challenged the status quo, reshaped career paths, inspired parents and changed lives. Read it to learn how to be more creative, more agile, and more capable of making the connections that your more specialized peers cannot see.
'If you're a generalist who has ever felt overshadowed by your specialist colleagues, this book is for you' - Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft
Shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
'I loved Range' - Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers
'I want to give Range to everyone who wants humans to thrive in an age of robots. Range is full of surprises and hope, a twenty-first century survival guide' Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World
'It's a joy to spend hours in the company of a writer as gifted as David Epstein' Susan Cain, bestselling author of Quiet
'A goldmine of surprising insights. Makes you smarter with every page' James Clear, bestselling author of Atomic Habits
A Financial Times Essential Reads of 2019 pick
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A powerful argument for how to succeed in any field: develop broad interests and skills while everyone around you is rushing to specialize.
In this landmark book, David Epstein shows you that the way to succeed is by sampling widely, gaining a breadth of experiences, taking detours, experimenting relentlessly, juggling many interests - in other words, by developing range.
Studying the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors and scientists, Epstein demonstrates why in most fields - especially those that are complex and unpredictable - generalists, not specialists are primed to excel.
No matter what you do, where you are in life, whether you are a teacher, student, scientist, business analyst, parent, job-hunter or retiree, you will see the world differently after you've read Range. You'll understand better how we solve problems, how we learn and how we succeed.
In this fascinating book, David Epstein argues that although the world seems to demand more and more specialization - in your career, for example - what we actually need is more people 'who start broad and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives while they progress'. His examples run from Roger Federer to Charles Darwin to Cold War-era experts on Soviet affairs. I think his ideas even help explain some of Microsoft's success, because we hired people who had real breadth within their field and across domains.
If you're a generalist who has ever felt overshadowed by your specialist colleagues, this book is for you. 
