We Ameraicans do love the story of the self-made man.
Malcom Gladwell has written four books that explore sucess in America.
The Tipping Point,
Blink,
Outliers and
What the Dog Saw are his explorations of the phenomenom. I cannot recommend these books to highly.
Particularly, in
Outliers Gladwell makes a very strong case that sucess in America has Who you know (Who can provide you with opportunities) When you were born (What opportunities were available to you) and practice (The magic number seems to be 10,000 hours -- regardless of your choice of endevor).
Bill Gates was the son of affluelnt parents who sent him to a forward thinking private High School just when Computers were coming into public attention. On of the other student's parent was part of a (to fail) computer start up. They donated a terminal to the school. They didn't care that their son and his friends took advantage of unused computer time at night. That is where Bill Gates got his 10,000 hours.
Of course IBM also told Bill, sure keep the software, we're a hardware company.
I just stumbled across his blog. I haven't looked at it much (but it will earn at least a temporary bookmark) I offere it for your review.
http://gladwell.typepad.com/