Grit

An Ingenious Niche

Duckworth ranges wide for her illustrative examples, from crossword puzzles in The New York Times to the relationships between talent and effort and between skill and effort. Her consultations for NBA and NFL teams prove handy as she uses, for example, the Seattle Seahawks and their coach, Pete Carroll, as examples of institutionalized grit.

This book carves out an ingenious market niche. Duckworth’s combination of winning anecdotes, how-to advice and relevant research place this work precisely amid the ranks of self-help books, “this-is-how-it-works” books and “this-is-how-what-works-applies-to-your-life” books of the Malcolm Gladwell range. The book’s strong sales reflect the intelligence of Duckworth’s niche creation, which getAbstract recommends to self-help fans who want to delve deeper than the usual material.