Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

by Malcolm Gladwell

Communities have their own stories, and those stories are contagious. Actually, the word story isn’t quite right. A better word is overstory. An overstory is the upper layer of foliage in a forest, and the size and density and height of the overstory affect the behavior and development of every species far below on the forest floor. I think that small-area variation—such as what distinguishes Waldorf schools from other schools and what sets Boulder apart from Buffalo—is more like an overstory than a story. It’s not something explicit that’s drilled into every inhabitant. The overstory is made up of things way up in the air, in many cases outside our awareness. We tend to forget about the overstory because we’re so focused on the life going on in front of and around us. But overstories turn out to be really, really powerful.