Themes in The Tipping Point Essay

The Tipping Point

Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point. New York, Boston, London. Little, Brown and Company. 2000. 2002 reprint Back Bay Books. 301 pages. Endnotes, Acknowledgments, Index. Paperback.

Malcolm Gladwell is an excellent writer. His writing style is very personal. This book is clearly written for a general audience. There is very little technical information and the things that he does write about are explained very clearly with lots of examples. When writing the book, Malcolm did alot of research himself. He doesnt rely on other studies as much as his own experiences. This provides a great first hand perspective. He is able to connect with the audience because he is sharing personal stories. He uses colorful and descriptive language to put forth his ideas. This paragraph from the book is an example of his writing style: The theory of Tipping Points requires, however, that we reframe the way we think about the world. I have spent a lot of time, in this book, talking about the idiosyncrasies of the way we relate to new information and to each other. We have trouble estimating dramatic, exponential change. We cannot conceive that a piece of paper folded 50 times over could reach the sun. There are abrupt limits to the number of cognitive categories we can make and the number of people we can truly love and the number of acquaintances we can truly know. We throw up our hands at a problem phrased in an abstract way, but have no difficulty at all solving the same problem rephrased as a social dilemma. All of these things are expressions of the peculiarities of the human mind and heart, a refutation of the notion that the way we function and communicate and process information is straightforward and transparent. It is not. It is messy and opaque.

The theme is the book is about social phenomenon on a non-linear scale. Gladwells premise is that phenomenon change on an exponential basis. In other words, once a threshold has been reached, trends occur. For example, lets say a certain type of hat is made. First ten people start wearing it. Then slowly 100 people start wearing it. Then, 150 wear it. Suddenly, 5,000 people wear the hat. That is the theory of the tipping point.

The author relies on case studies primarily to discuss the theory. One of the studies involved the t.v. show Blues Clues. Another involved the show Sesame Street. Gladwell interviewed many different people, and all of them contributed different ideas to the Tipping Point theory. He talks of three different kinds of people; Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. All of these types of people help to reach a threshold to instigate social phenomenon. A good example is Paul Revere. Revere wasnt the only one to ride across the country warning people of the incoming British. But he was a Connector, someone that knew alot of people and had significant influence. If it wasnt for him, the threshold of people being called into action wouldnt have been reached and there may not have been enough soldiers to fend off the British.

Malcolm Gladwell is an English-born writer based out of New York. He has written The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000), Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), and Outliers: The Story of Success (2008). His mother was also a writer. Gladwell graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in history. He is currently a staff writer for The New Yorker. Both The Tipping Point and Blink sold over two million copies domestically. In 2005, Time named Malcolm Gladwell one of its 100 most influential people. In 2007, he received the American Sociological Associations first Award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues. He is making an original contribution to the field of sociology with a new interpretation of social phenomenon.

I really liked this book. The subject matter was very interesting to me, and it was cool to get a different perspective on large-scale social movements. Gladwell put forth his ideas in a very clear manner backed up by lots of evidence. The case studies that he used in his book were very interesting and also very appropriate. They supported his thesis very well. Overall I think Gladwell has a very strong argument for the tipping point model in sociology.