The Tipping Point: How Little Things can make a big difference

• Autographed by Malcolm Gladwell

This famous New York Times, bestsellernow about to reach an even wider audience in paperbackis a book that is changing the way North American thinking about selling products and disseminating ideas. Gladwells new afterword in this edition describes how readers can constructively apply the tipping point principle in their own lives and work. Widely hailed as an important work that offers not only a roadmap for business success, but also a profoundly encouraging approach to solving social problems. “The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the increase in smoking in adolescence, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of other mysterious changes that mark everyday life,” Malcolm Gladwell writes, “is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.” Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell’s Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject. For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanize the forces of resistance so effectively in part because that was what Gladwell calls a “Connector”: he knew almost everyone, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each of the cities spanning . But Revere “was not the man with the biggest Rolodex in colonial Boston,” was also a “Maven” who gathered extensive information on the British. He knew what was happening and he knew exactly whom to tell. The phenomenon continues to this day – think of how often it has received information in an email which had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching you. Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as “stickiness” of ideas or the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple explanations, clear and entertaining illustrative anecdotes, such as comparing the pedagogical methods of Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues, or explaining it would be even easier to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the actor Rod Steiger. Although some readers may find the transitional passages between chapters hold hands a little too strong, and Gladwell’s closing invocation of the possibilities of social engineering sketchy, even the cold, The Tipping Point is one of the most effective books on science for a general audience in ages. It seems inevitable that “tipping point”, like “future shock” or “chaos theory”, will soon become one of those ideas that everybody knows – or at least knows by name. – Ron Hogan

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

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