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

I've read all three Gladwell books now, in reverse order no less. Hands down, this way my favorite. Outliers was a strong contender, but the overall implications of his theory of ideas of epidemics in our world seems limitless. Buy this book and you'll read it in record time.

This is a really neat book. The author uses the paradigm of little changes that prompt gigantic change to discuss sociology, environmental aesthetics and more. I purchased on Kindle, and have enjoyed very much.

Thought provoking, mind altering book. It is a must read for all types of people.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1JNJLB4H99TCD Normally I stick to recommending books that help the reader live and experience the tenets of positive psychology. In this case, I am recommending a book that does that...yet it might have taken 10 years for it to get to that point. I will admit I admire everything Malcolm writes, I heard him speak and he speaks about his ideas every bit as well as he writes about them, so my recommendation does have to take that into consideration. However, positive tipping points are all around us. I did this review to help you see why I feel that way. Thank you, Andrea T. Goeglein, PhD, [...] [...]

This is an interesting book with some thought-provoking assertions, but don't expect more than a light read and a lot of unresolved ideas.

The chapters follow a similar pattern throughout the book, with the author introducing a scenario and then presenting several likely influences that seem to have contributed to the final tipping point that pushed the example scenario into its final explosive proliferation. Although several contributing factors are presented, he always champions to one particular influencing factor over all of the others. However, he does this without offering any concrete argument as to why the other factors have suddenly been discarded. And, of course, there are always far more potential influences that he overlooks entirely. So you get to think, "Hmm. That's interesting. I wonder what else might have played a part?". It's always good to have something to think about, but don't expect any real resolution.

I could have done without the rather blatant tobacco commercial in the last quarter of the book. According to Malcolm Gladwell and his quoted study, which was most likely funded by a tobacco company, smokers are intrinsically cooler, sexier, more fun, and less likely to be conformists than non-smokers. It's so ridiculously and blatantly promotional that it's almost funny. But it keeps him going for quite a large portion of the book, as he increasingly pushes his opinion that people smoke because they are cool and are individuals who like to make their own choices. He basically says those exact things outright. Not only does he spend pages and pages promoting smoking, but he doesn't offer any glimpse of any alternate viewpoint or research at all. Some years ago I actually wrote a major end-of-year paper on smoking for my psych course at university and I can tell you that all of his smoking-related points are almost diametrically opposed to the vast majority of peer-reviewed research. I wasn't super-sold on his other scenarios, but this certainly makes me wonder even more about the accuracy of rest of the book.

Malcolm is a long-time writer of magazine articles and this book feels like a lengthy magazine column, complete with advertising.