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Amazon.co.uk Review
"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviours spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of mimetics will recognise this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject.
For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanise the forces of resistance so effectively in part because he was what Gladwell calls a "Connector": he knew just about everybody, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each of the towns that he rode through. But Revere "wasn't just the man with the biggest Rolodex in colonial Boston", he was also a "Maven" who gathered extensive information about the British. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly whom to tell. The phenomenon continues to this day--think of how often you've received information in an e-mail message that had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching you.
Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as the "stickiness" of ideas or the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple, clear explanations and entertainingly illustrative anecdotes, such as comparing the pedagogical methods of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, or explaining why 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 their hands a little too tightly, and Gladwell's closing invocation of the possibilities of social engineering sketchy, even chilling, 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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Gladwell argues that many contemporary problems - from crime to teenage delinquency and traffic jams - behave like epidemics that are capable of sudden and dramatic changes in direction. Yet the right intervention at just the right time - the Tipping Point - can start a cascade of change and provide a method for developing strategies for everything from raising a child to running a company.
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In the mid-1990s, the city of Baltimore was attacked by an epidemic of syphilis. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
In the mid-1990s, the city of Baltimore was attacked by an epidemic of syphilis. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
72 of 76 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'The Tipping Point' is another entertaining, yet laboured book from Malcolm Gladwell. Like 'Blink' you get an interesting premise, explained very well at the beginning of the book, followed by 150 pages going over the same ground in greater depth. Once you've grasped the initial concept and had it proven with a few examples, you don't really need to go over it much more. Saying that, this book is an entertaining read and has some wonderful examples to illustrate the various points. I particularly enjoyed the chapter exploring the benefits, and tipping point of, sesame street and blues clues. Other chapters though, like the one on suicide and smoking, are pretty aimless and take a long time to make a very minor, insignificant point. This book is worth a read if you liked 'Blink' and it has some interesting ideas explored in it. If you like this I'd recommend 'Predictably irrational' which has similar experiments and is more coherent and focused. In fact, I'd probably recommend that book before this one. This is a good read, but not a great read.
Feel free to check out my blog which can be found on my profile page.
Feel free to check out my blog which can be found on my profile page.
64 of 68 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In the Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell provides an overview on the phenomenon of social epidemics, the underlying reasons that make things tip. The book is well researched with academic contributions entangled with interesting narrative that illustrates the theory. I would have rated the book five stars if not for two issues. Firstly, the book is almost totally lacks critique about the theories and examples presented. Secondly, while the book contains a lot of interesting ideas, the effort to synthesize them is half-hearted.
Mr. Gladwell has a made a great effort in going through a vast literature – mainly academic, but also popular – to find a number of key factors behind the social epidemics and some interesting narrative to illustrate them. However, the book is not at all academic, rather the value of Mr. Gladwell’s writing comes from packaging academic research to simple concepts and explaining these in length through examples. For those interested in details, there are some ten pages of endnotes that explain the concepts more thoroughly and provide references to the original literature.
So what makes things tip? According to Mr. Gladwell this can be divided into three explaining categories: (1) the law of the few, (2) the stickiness factor, and (3) the power of context. The law of the few states that only a very small part of people are behind the word-of-mouth epidemics and they can be categorized into connectors, mavens, and salesmen. Connectors are persons with exceptionally large personal networks, mavens are experts on the “right” market price and on spotting bargains, and salesmen are persons with extraordinary skill to persuade. Stickiness factor refers to small “sticky” details that can greatly boost for instance the effect of advertising campaigns. Finally, the power of context states that people are powerfully affected by the surrounding circumstances in making their decisions.
The Tipping Point provides a way of interpreting what factors have contributed to a certain epidemic or trend. I would have appreciated an effort to synthesize the theory and preferably in a more normative manner, e.g. by providing a framework on how, say, advertising campaigns can be made more effective from the epidemics point of view. Now the focus is on providing somewhat miscellaneous ideas that often are unintuitive, but which have at least some evidence to support them. There would have been a more objective flavor to the book if Mr. Gladwell would have also discussed the limitations of the theory and other explaining factors. For instance, a product might be popular simply because it is superb without particular need of endorsement from connectors, mavens and salesmen; crime in New York might have dropped due to other factors than “power of context” in form of e.g. removing graffiti from the underground (such as the legalization of abortion as suggested in the Freakonomics book). Nevertheless, the Tipping Point is a thought-provoking and interesting book worth reading.
30 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A page-turner of ideas. I'm in no position to judge the soundness of the author's claims, and I'm not about to chase up his footnotes, but I certainly found it highly readable and stimulating. I devoured it in a couple of train journeys and have recommended it to anybody who'll listen.
There are enough big basic premises to get your teeth into, but not so many as to make it indigestible. I read it in between shots at Pinker's "How the Mind Works", which feels like a much denser, more complex and more "scholarly" work. The author seems to have done a fair bit of face-to-face research to get his story, and that helps to make it feel warm and personal. Come to think of it, he even brings Paul Revere to life, so he clearly has a knack with people!
Whether or not the author originated the concepts he presents, and whether or not they stand up to academic scrutiny, they became very "sticky" in this book - to borrow one of the most intuitively apposite ideas.
If you're a heavy-duty academic or social studies professional, it may well raise more questions than it answers. But if you're the sort who likes double-feature think pieces in serious mass-circulation magazines, this is a book for you.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Intriguing, but don't buy into the impact of parenting
I've read a number of Malcolm Gladwell's books and they are fascinating - they really force you to think differently. The Tipping Point was no exception in that regard. Read more
Published 3 months ago by C. Brown-quinn
Vey good
Good book, I recieved it quickly and read it quickly as well but it was well written and with good examples. I recommend it.
Published 6 months ago by Paul
A MUST READ
A book that should be mandatory reading for all students during their informative years prior to college. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Kamil M. Salamah
Very nice read
Tipping point is a very interesting and easy to read book. It does get a bit repetitive but personally I didn't feel bored reading the whole thing.
Published 6 months ago by GeorgeG
Discursive Explanations of Tipping Points
One of the advantages of reviewing a book like this ten years after it was published is that one may see whether the author's terminology has been adopted and passed into common... Read more
Published 7 months ago by J. Nichols
Brilliant as usual, but not as profound.
However it's not quite as entertaining as Blink or as profound as Outliers. In these respects it falls short of a page turner, otherwise it's brilliant.
Published 7 months ago by Osahon
Interesting but a bit of a one idea wonder
Enjoyable and great writing style but with lots of these type of books there is a cenrtal thesis which is then 'demonstrated'to death without exploration of what this might mean or... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Mr. Jack Hopkins
Good read - really an expanded magazine article
This is the kind of book that business students or any one interested in marketing ideas could read on the beach or over the course of a few hours and find informative,... Read more
Published 7 months ago by os
5stars!!
Great value for money, super speedy service and the book was in pristine condition! Excellent seller, very happy customer :D
Published 7 months ago by Eilidh A
A book that really makes you think, but it could have been half as...
I think the book didn't need to be so long, he stuck to his point throughout the book but I felt it got over explained a bit. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Mr. C. Bannister
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