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Binding: Audio Cassette
Dewey Decimal Number: 302
EAN: 9781570427930
Edition: 1st
Format: Abridged, Audiobook
ISBN: 1570427933
Label: Hachette Audio
Manufacturer: Hachette Audio
Number Of Items: 2
Publication Date: March 01, 2000
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Studio: Hachette Audio
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Review:
"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject.
For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanize the forces of resistance so effectively in part because he was what Gladwell calls a "Connector": he knew just about everybody, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each of the towns that he rode through. But Revere "wasn't just the man with the biggest Rolodex in colonial Boston," he was also a "Maven" who gathered extensive information about the British. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly whom to tell. The phenomenon continues to this day--think of how often you've received information in an e-mail message that had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching you.
Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as the "stickiness" of ideas or the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple, clear explanations and entertainingly illustrative anecdotes, such as comparing the pedagogical methods of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, or explaining why it would be even easier to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the actor Rod Steiger. Although some readers may find the transitional passages between chapters hold their hands a little too tightly, and Gladwell's closing invocation of the possibilities of social engineering sketchy, even chilling, The Tipping Point is one of the most effective books on science for a general audience in ages. It seems inevitable that "tipping point," like "future shock" or "chaos theory," will soon become one of those ideas that everybody knows--or at least knows by name. --Ron Hogan
Product Description:
Author looks at why major changes in our society so often happen suddenly and unexpectedly. An intellectual adventure story and a road map to change, with a profoundly hopeful message-that one imaginative person applying a well-placed lever can move the world. Two cassettes read by Malcolm Gladwell.
Average Rating: 
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I have really enjoyed reading this book so far. It has great insight on how the unexplainable things in life work.
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The book The Tipping Point is about how certain individuals can, directly and indirectly, affect and influence a mass group of people with the smallest amount of effort and in not so obvious ways.
After reading Outliers and The Tipping Point, I am beginning to think that Malcolm Gladwell is somewhat like a social scientist; he studies people. He doesn't seem to buy into social clichés, and his analysis tend to be insightful.
This is an interesting book. It is a different book than Outliers, which I read earlier. I found Outliers to be a more interesting book, however, this book The Tipping Book was pretty good and in the end made me think.
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The Tipping Point
Review by Ben Lundeen
Whether it is H1N1 or a social epidemic, epidemiologists help track patterns in relation to changes. Malcolm Gladwell in his book, The Tipping Point , uses the work of epidemiologists who evaluate how small changes gradually have a big effect on social events. Gladwell has a history of a very solid career working for the New Yorker, The Washington Post and many of his books have gained national attention like Blink and Outliers. The Tipping Point focuses on the minority viewpoint of epidemiologists. The author envisioned Tipping Point to show examples of past historical events, media, and how epidemiologist's patterns change people without a whole lot of effort or awareness. Gladwell helps the average person look at a world though a microscope of little daily changes in life in connection to their own. His past experiences and idea for this book came from talking to epidemiologists on the spread of aids in the 1980s. Aids is a worldwide issue today, but started out at a local scale.
Certain behaviors carry the traits of a virus. People tend to feed off the energy and nonverbal actions of others. The average person if they saw someone yawning or smiling at them they would smile back, if the motion was repeated enough and the circumstances were right. If you have ever remembered how you felt at a funeral, you remember your emotions run high. Once you think you have a threshold of pain, you see someone crying and most people mimic the emotion. In movies that aspect has played with people's emotions and has acted as a major selling point for the industry. In the movies Simon Birch and Shawshank Redemption your mind feeds your body emotions to act upon the visual images. Once you leave the room whatever feeling of agony or anger you felt vanishes. If you ever have had a child, parents can recall all the cute faces their kid has made. Studies show that babies are trying to mimic what adults are saying and doing through facial expressions. TV shows such as Blues Clues and Sesame Street have used two strategies to target the youth. Blues Clues used repetition by putting a 30-minute show on five times a week to get a simple message across. In a similar fashion, Sesame Street used magazine norms like 60-second trials of clips to engage its viewers to link characters like Big Bird to themes like the alphabet by tinkering the message. The youth don't mind repetition because each time their brains process the show in a different way and they want predictability in their shows.
Media affects us in ways we don't want it to and, at times, have no control over. Repetition is the key to why most commercials and billboards become so successful. Transitive property like a song to sell a product, under the right circumstances, affects our habits. Gladwell says it becomes irresistible to customers; this is referred to as the "stickiness factor." Another example is attaching an emotional message to a product like in 1954 Winston Filter Up Cigars Slogan, "Winston tastes like a cigar should." This was a simple message that got a lot of people to act on it. Sometimes commercials try to say too much and this creates a clutter problem. In 1992, Coca-Cola was the main sponsor of the Olympics, but only 12% of viewers knew this due to the massive amounts of commercials put on before and after their segment. It's amazing how powerful the human mind can become under the influences of outside media forces. The "stickiness factor" has changed the way marketers target potential age groups and teachers reinforce key concepts in education.
Social epidemics in the past have been documented in several different periods in history. The 1920s started with a minority group of women who started to express their feelings through nonverbal cues like short hair and more revealing clothing lead to a huge fashion movement and voting rights. This trend turned into the roaring twenties and inspired the youth to experiment outside the walls of their family's ideals to explore social experiences. In 1960's, Martin Luther King Jr. used speeches to inspire action for equal civil rights for the African American population. This was an example of "word of mouth epidemic" and change slowly started to happen. This was large part of the civil rights movement.
In the mid 1990s, Baltimore experienced a massive Syphilis epidemic. Experts pointed the causes towards: the type of people that lived there, economic status, and knowledge about the disease. Gladwell bought in a new theory called the 80/20 concept to explain the spread of the STDs. He said that twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the damage or inventions. We use this concept to explain a lot of trends and issues in our society to the average person. Darnell "Boss Man" McGee was a coach in St. Louis who slept with 100 underage girls and single handling increased the HIV epidemic ... Read More
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The author explores in this entertaining book how certain epidemics are started. He explains that there are three agents of change:
1) Law of the Few - where a few "exceptional" people (ones well connected, accumulate information, are persuasive) spread the word
2) Stickiness Factor - ways to make the message more memorable
3) Power of Context - ways to affect human behavior by tinkering with the immediate environment
He then uses this framework to explain epidemics varying from fashion trends to the dramatic drop in NYC subway crime rate during the 1990's.
Those who have enjoyed Gladwell's other books will not be disappointed.
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This book was great. I listened to it on audio, and I found myself driving to work with my mouth gaping open in utter fascination. It reminded me of Freakonomics, because the topics of study were so interesting and varied. Gladwell went from the success of Sesame Street and Blues Clues to the teenage suicide epidemic in Micronesia, to fluctuating crime rates in NYC to Paul Revere vs. William Dawes, and a million places in between. He did have a lot of anecdotes that were straight out my Sociology 101 textbook (Kitty Genovese, the Stanford prison experiment) but many of the studies and experiments I had not heard of, so I was still completely riveted throughout my entire commute. A must read!
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