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

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference | Malcolm Gladwell | Interesting, But Not Compelling

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The Tipping Point:...

	The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference Malcolm Gladwell Back Bay Books, 2002 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 933 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Explaining the unexplainable

This book, in itself, is an epidemic. It is like the Energizer Bunny: It keeps going and going and going.... Explaining the unexplainable! The author tries his best to explain the frenzy that is, at best, unforeseeable. Predicting "The Tipping Point" of any social craze is harder to foresee than a meteorologist taking a WAG at when and where it is going to rain. They do not KNOW, they just take a "best guess." Whether it be a website, a YouTube video, a book, a stock, the Pet Rock, the Hula Hoop, or anything else, no one can be certain if and when it will take off. The great thing is: those that are lucky enough to get on the bandwagon before everyone else does gets rewarded handsomely for their forethought. Hopefully we all have our chance to start something that hits "The Tipping Point" eventually or to be involved in one BEFORE the rush starts. Good Book.

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Interesting, But Not Compelling

Gladwell is incredibly smart and lucid, and has many insights into what makes an ordinary thing become an extraordinary trend. But he makes some far reaching assumptions that don't pan out. For instance, he argues that kids don't smoke to be cool, but rather that cool kids are more likely to smoke. Having three children who are in their twenties, I don't find that to be accurate. The kids I've spoken to who do smoke tend to do it for social reasons. And not for peer pressure, but to be like their friends. My youngest daughter used to come home reeking of smoke. I used to talk to her fairly late at night, at least partially, so I could smell her breath and be assured that she wasn't smoking. I asked her if she ever felt pressure to smoke, since almost all of her friends did. She didn't.
That said, much of the book was intriguing to me, since I never considered any relationship between how trends start and diseases spread. Gladwell is fairly convincing about the epidemic nature of trends. It's always fun to consider new ways of looking at why processes unfold the way they do.

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Interesting, but overrated

This book has become a best seller because it covers a very relevant topic. The tipping point challenges our tendency to think and predict the future in linear terms. Despite the fact that I enjoyed the reading, the book did not meet my high expectations.

A nice read for the beach or a rainy day

Don't get me wrong, "The Tipping Point" is a good book. I enjoyed it a good deal, and found several of the chapters extremely interesting. I just do not find it is as ground-breaking or thought-inspiring as other reviewers here and elsewhere. Malcolm Gladwell has taken an intriguing subject -- the science and mechanics of social epidemics, if you will -- and made it both accessible and easy-to-understand for laymen like myself. Only a smart and skilled writer like Gladwell could take such varying subjects as the popularity of hush puppies, the Broken Windows theory of urban crime, STD outbreaks, Paul Revere's famous ride to Lexington, and the teen suicide epidemic in Micronesia and meld them all into the same overriding story and pseudo-scientific study. The result is a read that is incredibly engrossing in most parts, pretty boring in a couple of chapters, and ultimately a nice read you can probably polish off in a lazy Saturday afternoon. While I question some of Gladwell's methods in delineating his theory, I think it's pretty believable nonetheless, and if not, at least its fascinating to read about!

I think that the book does get a little long-winded near the end. The chapter on teen suicide epidemic in Micronesia seems to go on forever, and is not nearly as interesting as several of the earlier chapters. Additionally, one thing I question is Gladwell's cherry-picking of scientific studies to prove his point(s). Throughout the book he does very well to cite various studies, theories, and articles which advance his main idea (as well as subsequent ones), but I left the book questioning how much Gladwell just chose to discuss only those studies which were favorable to his own beliefs. Obviously, this is something you encounter in any argument, but it leads one to question how exhaustive Gladwell's conclusions are. Again, this is only a small quibble.

In the end, I enjoyed "The Tipping Point" but I don't share the huge enthusiasm for it that a lot of people have. It didn't change how I look at things in the world; in fact, even though I finished it less than a week ago, I have not given a great deal of thought to it period. This isn't so much a criticism of the book; rather, I just disagree with people who have heaped so much praise on the book. Perhaps a lot of what Gladwell was saying went over my head, but in my view it's a good, interesting read and that's about it.

Three stars.

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