Why people recommend it
Range by David J. Epstein is a prominent book that explores the benefits and necessity of being a generalist in a world that increasingly pushes individuals toward narrow specialization. On The Ezra Klein Show in May 2023, Veronique highlighted the book as one of her favorites from recent years, praising its exploration of generalists. Similarly, Angela mentioned Range on No Stupid Questions in April 2024, recalling a related story from the sibling show People I (Mostly) Admire where Steve Levitt interviewed the author, and expressed her great fondness for the work. During an April 2024 episode of Huberman Lab, guest Coleman Ruiz briefly referenced the title to make a point during the conversation. Steve Levitt himself frequently discussed the book and its author on People I (Mostly) Admire. In January 2024, Levitt noted that Epstein had written great works like Range and The Sports Gene before detailing his career path. In January 2023, when Epstein appeared as a guest, Levitt introduced Range as an exploration of generalist advantages in a specialized world, reflected on how the book offered fresh societal insights regarding short- and long-term trade-offs, and observed that various societal and parental forces continually push people to specialize.
Who recommended it
Mentioned on the show without a named speaker — 16
“There's this awesome other story that comes actually from our sibling show People I (Mostly) Admire, where Steve Levitt was interviewing David Epstein, the author of the great book Range. I love David Epstein! I just need to say, it's a great book!”
“Like to use David Epstein's book title, right? It's range.”
“He's written some great books like Range and The Sports Gene, and he went from a master's degree in environmental sciences to working for Sports Illustrated.”
“One of my favorite books in the last few years has been a book by David Epstein called range”
“His second book, Range, discusses the benefits of being a generalist in a world overrun with specialists.”
“I hadn't really thought about this; even when I read your book, it's not like necessarily we've made a mistake as a society.”
“To give an example of that short-term long-term trade-off, a study came out too recently for me to get it into my book.”
“What I took from your book was that there are a lot of forces, parental and societal, that push people towards being quite specialized in what they do.”
“That's Sal Khan, the founder of the hugely popular education non-profit Khan Academy. Here's David Epstein, the author of Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.”
“you know I had a conversation with David Epstein the former writer for Sports Illustrated... you're going to talk about range now... and I read range and I talked to David and I think actually he raises good points”
“so there's a really lovely book that was written by a friend of mine david epstein um and uh it was uh it's called range”
“yeah david's work on range um in where he talks about range is brilliant”
“There's another book called uh range by david epstein where he talks about this basically in those exact terms he says testing spacing and interleaving are like the three sort of primary things for learning any skill whether whether it's like knowledge for a university subject or whether it's like tennis or golf or anything like that”
“Well we'll get it dig into your new book today range”
“so interesting point here David Epstein guys that wrote range he said that he'd done an analysis of when the out of the average age of this years of industry changing businesses”
“and then he there's a new book coming out called range and it's about how when you teach a kid or when you when you learn a lot of different disciplines so if you're some of the best violinists some of the best athletes whatever they didn't specialize”