His points are on the whole so obvious that I fail to see why a book needed to be written to explain them. Essentially, if you want to start a "social epidemic" you should:

a) make sure you attract people who are either persuasive, know lots of different people, or are "mavens" - enthusiasts in a particular field who have a lot of knowledge and therefore influence among non-enthusiasts. Imagine that - persuasive people are persuasive! And people who know lots of people help make connections between them! Well I never.

b) make your message "sticky" ie memorable - precisely how is not specified

c) make sure the "context" is right, in some unspecified way.

All this is ridiculously obvious.

As for the style of writing, take this nauseatingly condescending quote: writing about Paul Revere's ride , Gladwell informs us "news of the British march did not come by fax, or by means of a group e-mail. It wasn't broadcast on the nightly news, surrounded by commercials."

Just fancy that! Lots more examples of similar waffle.


I've been duped!   June 21, 2006
 61 out of 77 found this review helpful

This book sucks. Don't waste your hard earned money on it. Let me save you a few bucks here: Malcolm Gladwell is either a very self-aggrandizing man who is too busy thinking he is the god of marketing to notice that a great majority of his arguments lack any kind of cohesion or credibility whatsoever, or he is just so excited about his self-proclaimed 'paradigmatic' keys to the essense of social epidemics that he conveniently forgets to include that much needed credible evidence to support his long-winded theories, resulting in a book fit to satiate the appetite of audiences hungry for pop pseudo-science BS that will make them feel smart for reading it. Basically all this book is is a compilation of antecdotal evidence that is supposed to prove the truth in his words. Gladwell's arguments clearly violate some very important rules guiding intelligent thought: correlation does not imply causation (and the fact that two events happened on one occasion at the same time does not necessarily imply correlation), and the idea that a theory is bankable because one instance of antecdotal evidence exists. Umm, okay, that's like saying that I know a guy who won the lottery (I don't, but humor me), so it must be a logically good place to invest my paychecks (I don't have paychecks, but, please, humor me). I mean, I'm a 21-year-old college student, and not even a GOOD college student at that, and I could easily point out the flaws in his arguments -not just a single argument, but ALL of his arguments -as soon as I read them. I didn't even have to put the book down to think for a few minutes before I realized how absolutely pointless and downright ludicrous his 'insights' were. All that aside, his writing style is so patronizing and self-congratulatory that I could hardly stand to read any more than five pages at a time before my face got all scrunched up and I started uncontrollably muttering curse words under my breath. It makes me sad that people read this book and consider it a revelation in modern psychological and scientific thinking, not seeing it for what it is: an apparently very successful (thanks, readers of America) profit-driven waste of time. Gladwell made a ton of money off what probably only took him, like, 15 minutes to write, and THAT is the only thing genius about this book.


great exposition of a trivial point   March 21, 2000
 59 out of 67 found this review helpful

C.P. Snow popularized the notion of 2 worlds, one scientificand one humanistic. Nowhere is the existence of these twin worldsmore obvious than in the praise heaped on this book; one trade reviewer quoted by amazon.com says it "offers an incisive and piquant theory..."

What, you might ask, is this undiscovered idea? Why its the principle of exponential growth, the idea that the new amount of some quantity being measured is proportional to the initial amount rather than a constant (linear) increase. This is captured in the mathematics that describes how epidemics spread, populations grow (well known to Malthus more than a century ago), radioactivity decays, and so on. And this idea lends the book its title; in an epidemic when the ratio exceeds 1 the infection will spread rapidly; hence it has passed the "tipping point".

I don't mean to demean Gladwell's book; it is actually quite well written and loaded with interesting examples of this principle at play. For this alone the book is worth reading.

But what is more illuminating than the examples Gladwell gives is what the critical response to the book says about the mathematical illiteracy of today's intellectual. Exponential growth & decay is a trivial concept to anyone who's ever taken a serious science class, even at the high school level. So the response by the learned community to so simple a concept is a profound confirmation of the reality of Snow's observation. Apparently this simple concept has escaped the intellectuals who shower accolades on this book for providing such fresh insight and perspective.

In the end I am both saddened and gladdened by this book. Gladdened because the book provides novel examples of a well-known principle in action. Saddened because the intellectual world is so surprised by a concept from the scientific/mathematic world as simple as exponential growth.


Multidisciplinary Mastery   March 6, 2000
 52 out of 57 found this review helpful

I've taught psychology at a university for twenty years, and was prepared to be dubious about Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point"; he is, after all, a journalist, not an academic. Despite his highly readable style, though, I was amazed by the level of sophistication and scholarship that he brings to his subjects. You can cavil about details, but the vigor and intellectual energy of the book is formidable. "The Tipping Point" assembles sometimes arcane findings from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Consumer Researcher, Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, American Journal of Sociology, International Journal of Criminology and Penology and other scholarly resources. It explains and builds upon research by such major social-science figures as Marc Granovetter, Jonathan Crane, and the legendary Thomas Schelling. And the project is infused with an interdisciplinary ease: a special pleasure is the unexpected juxtapositions of research in linguistics, medical science, social psychology, marketing, political science, and mathematics All of which is to say that the erudition and theoretical sophistication of this work is truly impressive. It may be aimed at "civilians," but the guy can teach us scholars a few things


A thought provoking, interesting and potentially useful book   July 1, 2000
 52 out of 55 found this review helpful

This relatively short book is a very pleasant surprise. Usually I am quite skeptical of new theories and concepts that attempt to explain human behavior, since the thinking, embedded in pompous language, often proves shallow and the primary goal seems simply to grab attention and book sales. Instead I found Gladwell's book well written, fast paced, interesting and thought provoking. Subject to translating its ideas successfully into practical actions, I believe it is potentially very useful in social sciences and business.

Gladwell's use of examples from very different fields adds to the interest in and credibility of the factors that contribute to a sudden "epidemic" - good or bad - of a behavior, an idea, a product or a belief. I am particularly intrigued by his concept that the true underlying causes and explanations for what we perceive as extremely complex social issues, for example, can be "tipped" with simple, direct actions in the right place at the right time. All too often governments and companies try to solve their big problems with excessively expensive, but ineffective programs or projects. I agree with him that attempted solutions frequently fail to address basic motivational factors and that the best solutions are often counterintuitive.

For those of us in business, I think the concepts in this book, properly applied, could make us more effective. Gladwell's business examples, his linkage to Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" and his brief discussion of the "magic 150" make the book worth reading. Far from being a "how to" handbook, considerable thought will be required to apply it practically, which I believe will be a good learning experience.

As I read the book I realized that many analogs of this concept exist in the physical world. There are many examples from stereo amplifiers to martial arts in which relatively small forces or energy inputs at the right place and time cause large differences in outcomes.

Why five stars? The book gave me a new perspective for thinking how and why things happen in society and business. It presents interesting observations and information about trends that affect us. I think it will be useful in my business. It is well written. And, it is unpretentiously short.