The Tipping Point (English, Paperback, Malcolm Gladwell)

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference is a book that explores how understanding the nature of social epidemics helps in comprehending the sociological changes in one’s life.

Summary Of The Book

Malcolm Gladwell, the world renowned journalist and author, examines the social epidemics surrounding the lives of common men and offers a fresh perspective on the world. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference is a book that talks about change and helps the reader understand why changes happen so unexpectedly and quickly. Drawing inspiration from sociology, psychology, and epidemiology, the book offers an intellectual adventure story that is loaded with examples from the different worlds of fashion, media, business, and even education.

Gladwell defines the three fundamentals that can be applied to social epidemics such as rumors and trends. The bases of his theories are three key points which are The Power of Context, The Stickiness Factor, and The Law of the Few. He makes use of several case studies like the story of the Hush Puppies and the decreasing crime rate in New York City, to prove his point.

Tipping point is that magical moment of time when a trend, social behavior, or an idea crosses a threshold and spreads like fire, just like an epidemic. He argues that just the way a sick person can initiate an epidemic of the flu, similarly messages, products, behavior, and ideas can spread like infectious diseases. The book deals with certain specific situations where the concept of tipping point was used and the author explains how this concept can help people solve the numerous problems they encounter in their everyday life.

He examines a variety of events and situations such as direct mail, fashion trends, children’s television, and smoking to explain how a social epidemic and be started and sustained. He draws parallels between the behavior and volatility of human sociological problems and epidemics. Gladwell emphasizes the fact that right intervention at the right time is most crucial and on the other hand years of efforts at an intervention may turn out to be futile if not applied at the right time.

First published in 2000 by Little Brown, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference sold 1.7 million copies in the first six years. An internationally-acclaimed bestseller, it uses the tipping point phenomenon to help people throughout the world change the way they think about trading products and spreading ideas.

About Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell is an award-winning bestselling author, speaker, and journalist.

His other published books include Outliers: The Story of Success, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, and What The Dog Saw: And Other Adventures.

Born on 3rd September 1963, Malcolm Gladwell attended the University of Toronto's Trinity College to complete his bachelor’s degree in history. He started his career in journalism with The American Spectator. A British-Canadian journalist, he was awarded the Order of Canada in 2011. Four of his books have been on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Gladwell has been awarded two honorary degrees by the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo.