Book Club: Revenge of the Tipping Point

Malcolm Gladwell revisits his 2006 classic in the new Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering. He expands and updates the original premise – that ideas and trends grow slowly, like a pandemic, until they hit a point where they go viral and radically change the context around the issue. Health examples include wide variation in prices and practice patterns between communities and teen suicide. change can be a specific location, like Miami, or a broader issue, like the Holocaust. He describes evidence that Tipping Points tend to happen when the trend reaches the Magic Third, and the context and culture, or Overstories, that frame the changes and how they form and spread. He outlines examples of using Tipping Points for social engineering, good and bad. Definitely worth reading.