The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000)

Sheesh, I so enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's books, and this might be my favorite yet. Maybe in just a few small ways, he makes this mysterious thing called life a little bit more understandable.

If you're new to Gladwell, he has a particular style. Specifically he weaves the most captivating stories together to come to important sociological conclusions. It's so much fun!

In The Tipping Point Gladwell explores the "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point" where big changes occur. In other words, why things become viral. And he explains why. (Wikipedia has a pretty good summary actually.)

In short there are three rules:
1. The Law of the Few: where he looks at connectors (super well connected folks), mavens (informed specialists), and salespersons (charismatic persuaders).
2. The Stickiness Factor - how impactful a particular message is. In particular he explored Seasame Street and Blue's Clues for being sticky for children.
3. The Power of Context - here he looks at how context influences behavior, namely the "bystander effect," group influences (John Wesley and the Ya-ya sisterhood), and the "rule of 150."

The particular things from the book that stand out are his theory for why New York City had such drastic reduction in crime. Basically, the city spent billions to make the subways cleaner, which makes people less likely to commit crimes. It sounds oversimplified, actually my description is wildly inadequate. (Search for "the broken windows theory" for more.) That said, the idea that beauty begets beauty sticks for me.

Second - he looked at the epidemic of teen suicides in micronesia, and in the afterward compares it to school shootings in the US. Definitely the most compelling theory for mass violence I've heard.

All-in-all, a wonderful, enlightening read that I may read again. His books aren't ones that I'd buy though, partly because every library in world has one, but they feel like a novel almost or maybe a compilation of short stories that are strung together to form big ideas. ( )

Gladwell considers spread of trends, disease, social problems, and social problem fixes as epidemics. Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen are needed to spread the word to the masses. ( )

2015
https://www.librarything.com/topic/197329#5300667
(link goes to an LT page with my review) ( )

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12548965 ( )

A very interesting read covering topics that affect us daily such as urban crime, size of organisations, epidemics, etc. ( )