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Sarah's Reviews > The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
by Malcolm Gladwell
by Malcolm Gladwell
Can I give this zero stars?
When I read this book, back in 2006, I got really mad and wrote a scathing review of it on Amazon.com. Here it is:
"I've been duped!, June 20, 2006
By Sarah (California, USA) - See all my reviews
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 self-aggrandizing ass 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 anecdotal 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 anecdotal 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."
Yeah, I was kinda mad when I wrote that. This book doesn't really do much in the way of illustrating how to market ideas -rather, it seems more like a marketing tool itself. Gladwell sure knows how to create a brand for himself, complete with a legion of raving followers who can't think for themselves. That scares me.
When I read this book, back in 2006, I got really mad and wrote a scathing review of it on Amazon.com. Here it is:
"I've been duped!, June 20, 2006
By Sarah (California, USA) - See all my reviews
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 self-aggrandizing ass 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 anecdotal 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 anecdotal 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."
Yeah, I was kinda mad when I wrote that. This book doesn't really do much in the way of illustrating how to market ideas -rather, it seems more like a marketing tool itself. Gladwell sure knows how to create a brand for himself, complete with a legion of raving followers who can't think for themselves. That scares me.
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Jennifer
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Jan 18, 2009 02:00pm
THANK YOU!!
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I'm about 100 pages into this and would normally ignore the ramblings of some blowhard college kid, but I can't ignore your scathing review of this book. Maybe you will correspond back, maybe you won't, so I'll keep this brief. You've heard of Twitter, right? Think about how Twitter works and how it's skyrocketed in popularity and then apply that to what Gladwell talks about i.e. the way word-of-mouth spreads.
How in the hell does that translate into b.s.?
Maybe you aren't smart enough to grasp how this applies to the world. You yourself said you weren't a good college student.
I agree with Greg and completely disagree with your review of this book and your seething remarks. Mr. Gladwell does not deserve this kind of vitriol as he has made many very concerted and very well researched attempts to explain the unexplained cause of things. If he was such an ass like you said, he would not succeed in writing now four bestsellers. We must all be jackasses then who enjoy his writing.
I didn't have much of a problem with the actual IDEAS that the book presented. I actually do believe that many of his ideas are probably valid. Problem is, they aren't HIS ideas and the arguments he makes to try to "back them up" aren't actually logical arguments. They're dumbed down anecdotes that don't actually prove anything. I've heard of Twitter. I love Twitter. But you can't have an intellectual thought on Twitter. You just can't. That's why it's popular. People like their brain food in french-fry sized bites. Also, the author just writes like a total douchebaggy asshole. Seriously.
I now agree with you after attempting to read Blink. That was douche at it's finest. I passed judgment on your review far too soon. I apologize. This is not a good author, nor original.
I'm going to defend this very lightly, I don't think Gladwell is self aggrandizing and you don't need an original theory in a book to stitch a variety of ideas together to form a new coherent whole (that's all Steve Job's did and he was visionary). He clearly and concisely points out connectors, mavens and salesman, context etc. and I think he does quite well in showing how social epidemics form. He also cites a lot of psychological studies and examples throughout the book that to me seem very credible. So either you didn't read his book or you didn't note the large number of examples and scientific, neurological and psychological studies.Maybe if you cited and quoted key areas yourself we could understand at what points he is aggrandizing and we could empathise. Maybe you could also point out the pseudo-science parts as well. That way you'd actually build some support rather than... For lack of a better word, ranting.
I remember this book! I think you would hate to know that this book is a required course reading for a UT advertising class. My professor absolutely adores his concepts, but I do agree that they are not entirely original.
The author actually did a ton of research for his book, most of which the scientific community had no problem with. Doing independent research, there are a few claims made that are disputed, and more trials could have been run in places, but saying he made it all up relying on basic fallacy is a mistake. Now, since he wrote the book before widespread use of the Internet, it doesn't apply as much today (since Malcolm talks about months and years, not hours and days), and he does oversimplify a bit , but that doesn't chance the fact that the author did the research and relied on the evidence he had.
