The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

[Caitlin]

"Why did crime in New York drop so suddenly in the mid-90s? How does an unknown novelist end up a bestselling author? Why is teenage smoking out of control, when everyone knows smoking kills? What makes TV shows like Sesame Street so good at teaching kids how to read? Why did Paul Revere succeed with his famous warning? In this brilliant and groundbreaking book, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell looks at why major changes in our society so often happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Ideas, behavior, messages, and products, he argues, often spread like outbreaks of infectious disease. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a few fare-beaters and graffiti artists fuel a subway crime wave, or a satisfied customer fill the empty tables of a new restaurant. These are social epidemics, and the moment when they take off, when they reach their critical mass, is the Tipping Point. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell introduces us to the particular personality types who are natural pollinators of new ideas and trends, the people who create the phenomenon of word of mouth. He analyzes fashion trends, smoking, children's television, direct mail and the early days of the American Revolution for clues about making ideas infectious, and visits a religious commune, a successful high-tech company, and one of the world's greatest salesmen to show how to start and sustain social epidemics. The Tipping Point is an intellectual adventure story written with an infectious enthusiasm for the power and joy of new ideas. Most of all, it is a road map to change, with a profoundly hopeful message--that one imaginative person applying a well-placed lever can move the world.

[Caitlin]

There is not a page goes by in this book where I don't think some variation of, "That's really interesting! Good points!" I can't even help myself anymore. I was trying to find another way to describe it but I can't.
This book is super interesting and brings up a lot of good points about weird ways our world works.

[Kenzie]

Ok, so I read this a few years ago for a psychology class and thought it was very interesting. I remember kind of dreading having to read it at first, but I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, I liked it enough that I ended up reading his other book "Blink" (also very good).

The parts that really stood out to me, and that I still remembered were the Broken Windows theory and the part about Stickiness with Sesame Street and Blues Clues.

I skimmed over it just so I could comment here. I had forgotten about Connectors and Mavens. Do you know of anyone that fits those descriptions? I have an aunt that seems to know EVERYONE! She always seems to have a connection for whatever you need.

Can anyone think of anything else that could be a tipping point? Ideas that are particularly contagious? And who else yawned at the beginning when he was talking about yawning? It's so contagious that I yawned while typing that!