Tiger Woods got an early start with golf: As we know, he was given a putter when he was seven months old and never let go. Less well-known is Roger Federer's path to the top. He dabbled before specializing and spent his boyhood engaged in a wide range of sports—including squash, wrestling and skateboarding—before gravitating, on his own, to tennis.
Journalist David Epstein says that late specialization demonstrably helped not just Mr. Federer but elite athletes in many sports. It can serve the rest of us well, too. In his latest book, “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World,” Mr. Epstein makes a well-supported and smoothly written case on behalf of breadth and late starts.
The author speaks up for quitters, people who have not yet found their métier: Vincent van Gogh when he taught French and math at a boarding school, or Charles Darwin when he abandoned medical studies and was preparing to join the clergy. That was when Darwin took an unpaid position on HMS Beagle, an experience that would be, in Mr. Epstein's words, “perhaps the most impactful post-college gap year in history.”
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