Revenge of the Tipping Point
I read this mostly because it popped up as available on Libby and I’ve kind of sort of read the previous book. Malcolm Gladwell famously popularized “The Tipping Point” as a phrase in modern society and for this 20 year anniversary, decided to follow up with another book of the same ilk. Note, I listened to the book, and think it made it special because he narrates it himself.
The book is…interesting in that it reintroduces the reader to the concept of the tipping point, the point where things go in the direction that you are “tipping” it in and is basically impossible to reign back. He has a few new stories that rehash this type of behavior, the corruption in miami, the oxycontin case, covid super spreaders, and perhaps most interesting of all, college admissions and the role of sports it plays.
Common to all these stories is basically what causes something to tip, where Gladwell hypothesizes is the magic third. Basically when 1/3 of a population starts believing in something, or starts doing something, that’s when you can predict a tipping point of a sorts has been reached. I’m not sure if this is scientifically identifiable and feels like this is more or less something that has happened with a few anecdotes, hence my hesitancy to endorse it as more than just “a few anecdotes”.
The problem is mostly that the books’ anecdotes and the conclusion it wants you to read along with it hand holding you all the way is that its not at all that cut and dry and simple. I’m highly dubious of the magic third and i also believe there’s a lot of the “cherry picked anecdotes to fit my theory” going on. I wish there was more scholarship to this book than just his hypothesis and felt that this would be better served as a PhD thesis than just a pop-soc book. But of course, no one wants to actually do this type of scholarship, and all the money is in pop-soc books anyway.
As usual, with all Malcolm Gladwell books, come for the really well written and interesting anecdotes, but do NOT stay for the hypothesis that comes with those anecdotes. There’s no science behind it, and you might be misled into thinking there’s more rigors to it more than just what they are, stories.
I don’t regret reading the book because its still interesting stories, but can say if you’ve read the original, this update doesn’t really provide much.