Summary

Chapter 4 is the second part of "The Trouble with Genius." Gladwell returns to Chris Langan. In an interview with him, Langan describes how his family is very poor while he is growing up in Montana. After high school, he wins a scholarship to Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but loses the scholarship after the first year when his mother fails to turn in some financial aid paperwork. He transfers to the University of Montana, but when he needs to change his schedule to accommodate something he is told he cannot, and he drops out. He never returns to school and starts working in construction. He has been working on what he feels is an important theory of the universe, but despairs of it ever being published because he does not have the traditional college background.

Langan does not...