The Tipping Point

by Malcolm Gladwell

Short description from wikipedia.

Gladwell defines a tipping point as "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point."^[1] The book seeks to explain and describe the "mysterious" sociological changes that mark everyday life. As Gladwell states, "Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do."^[2] The examples of such changes in his book include the rise in popularity and sales of Hush Puppies shoes in the mid-1990s and the precipitous drop in the New York City crime rate after 1990.

This again is a great book by Gladwell, though I personally like Outliers the best because it is the most personal. This is more of broad strokes of social behavior. But still it is a wonderfully insightful read on what causes a tipping point to occur. In all, I think it presents great ideas, though I believe it is subject to quite a bit of reasoning and one can argue one way or another whether these hypothesis are true or not. A great thing with Gladwell is he forms his arguments in a very comprehensible way, keeping one engaged. So even though you may not necessarily agree with what is said, you would at least stick around to find out what he's on about..