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Born to Rebel
by Frank J. Sulloway
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Random House Value Publishing (1998-11-17)
ISBN: 0517282364
EAN: 9780517282366
Hardcover
Release Date: 1998-11-17
SKU: 21945
Condition: New
Comments: Pantheon, 1996. 1ST EDITION. WITH GREAT PHOTOGRAPHS! HARDCOVER BOOK W/GILT LETTERING, Dust Jacket and pages are NEW! Rapid shipping W/TRACKING. AIRMAIL.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
"An important and valuable study that will define research agendas for years to come. It is also hugely fun to read."
--Boston Globe
Why do people raised in the same families often differ more dramatically in personality than those from different families? What made Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, and Voltaire uniquely suited to challenge the conventional wisdom of their times? This pioneering inquiry into the significance of birth order answers both these questions with a conceptual boldness that has made critics compare it with the work of Freud and of Darwin himself.
Frank J. Sulloway envisions families as ecosystems in which siblings compete for parental favor by occupying specialized niches. Combing through thousands of biographies in politics, science, and religion, he demonstrates that firstborn children are more likely to identify with authority whereas their younger siblings are predisposed to rise against it. Family dynamics, Sulloway concludes, is a primary engine of historical change. Elegantly written, masterfully researched, Born to Rebel is a grand achievement that has galvanized historians and social scientists and will fascinate anyone who has ever pondered the enigma of human character.
"Daring . . . a stunning achievement. "
--The New York Times Book Review
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Amazon.com Review
This groundbreaking book takes on the influence of birth order in personalities and offers some surprising conclusions. Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has undertaken the first comprehensive study of birth order in determining personality and social outlook. He produces overwhelming evidence that, because of the evolutionary hierarchy in families, first-born children are more likely to be conformists while the later-borns tend to be more creative and more likely to reject the status quo. He documents just how different siblings are from each another--a person tends to have more in common with any randomly chosen person of their own age than with a sibling--and explains why sibling differences occur. The book offers new insights into the determining factors of who we are and who our children will be, and it is unlike any research yet published.
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Customer Reviews
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Firstborns take heed, or you will likely prove Sulloway correct
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-10-22
Many reviews posted here do not argue his statistics, but rather argue the outcome. As science goes, the only way to refute the results is to refute the methodology or the data. It appears than many have read more into this monumental work than what Sulloway actually says. It appears that many more didn't actually read the entire book word-for-word as I just did, or your take on his approach would be either different, or your reading comprehension is considerably lower than what Sulloway is able to provide in content. Regardless, what I have learned as a lastborn (3 of 3) is that my greatest allies are often firstborns who keep me in touch with the status quo, and allow me to further refine my approach and arguments so that the end result of my work is better than if I was surrounded by a bunch of laterborns. Fully controlled by a firstborn is a disaster for me, but allied with a firstborn is priceless.
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This book illustrates to me what is wrong with psychology today
Rating  (1)
Date: 2007-06-13
5 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is illustrative to me of what is wrong with psychology today. As was brilliantly pointed out in Judith Harris's book "No Two Alike," this book has no scientific basis. I am at least the second review here to point this out.
As Harris explains, the portion of the variance for most major traits(juvenile delinquency being a rare exception) that can be attributed to birth order is basically negligible. The only reason for why a correlation may exist at all is probably due to genetic differences in the parents themselves. For example, parents with higher IQs tend to have fewer children. Since IQ is a heritable trait, we can expect only children to have higher IQs than latter-born children in large families. The cause here is genetic in origin. Once these genetic effects have been corrected for, the role of birth order becomes negligible.
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Is Sulloway's work fraudulent?
Rating (1)
Date: 2006-03-31
16 out of 18 customers found this reveiw helpful
A reader writes: "However, Mr. Sulloway's book is tightly reasoned and supported by a great deal of research."
You might want to look at the discussion of Sulloway's work in Judith Harris' recent _No Two Alike_, pp 92-112. According to that account, Sulloway's work was never published in a peer reviewed journal, the book in which it was published failed to provide the sort of information needed for other people to check the truth of his results, and Sulloway repeatedly refused requests for such data--for instance, the names of the Protestant and Catholic martyrs whose birth order rankings he offers as evidence, or cites to the studies whose results he claims to summarize.
When someone wrote a critical article pointing out evidence that his factual assertions about the data were false, he delayed the publication for several years by the threat of lawsuits.
Judging by her previous book, Harris is a careful writer, so absent some evidence to the contrary my current conclusion is that Sulloway is a fraud.
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what you need to know of the man and his work
Rating (1)
Date: 2005-10-12
13 out of 18 customers found this reveiw helpful
For many years I assumed birth order maters - and that this is my unique idea. Ha! And Ha! - respectfully, now I know. But at the time I heard Sulloway's lecture to the Skeptic Society - I was still sympathetic to the idea. Finally someone got it! I thought. However, listening to him, I knew he got it all wrong. I could explain how he is wrong, and yet, he did all that research, he had all those numbers... maybe he is right after all...
Later I found out. See for yourself. And consider buying that issue of JPS. I have it, it is a worthy reading.
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/03/born_to_sue.html
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Innovation, Innovators and Acceptors rather
Rating  (3)
Date: 2004-04-05
6 out of 7 customers found this reveiw helpful
I think the book is misrepresented by it's own title. It's not really a collection of knowledge on birth order and the psychological ramifications of birth order. Instead, the book is about applying what is known about birth order to see if there is a correlation between historical figures' birth order and family variables, and their degree of revolutionary innovation, or acceptance of revolutionary innovation. Most of the historically significant scientists are covered, such as Galileo, Copernicus, and Darwin (especially Darwin, there's whole chapters on Darwin). There's a lot of biographical information in the book in general.
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