Tipping Point

Much like a lot of other best sellers, I found the Tipping Point to be a little over-rated. Don’t get me wrong. Its a really good book and makes for an easy read. Infact, I think the book proves its point very well because its sales were itself in some sense an epidemic. But I would have enjoyed the book more had it not been surrounded by so much hype.

Anywho, coming back to the book. Tipping Point is a book about how social epidemics spread — be it the sudden popularity of Hush Puppies, the problem of teenage smoking, or the sudden drop in crime rate in New York city in the 90s. Malcolm Gladwell walks the audience through his “theory” on such phenomenon. The basic premise is that there are some underlying factors, some common patterns, some common actors and circumstances in each of these cases which make the epidemic “tip”.

As I said before, it makes for interesting read, though the book was verbose in parts. I liked the book because it offers a framework to look at such epidemics. While a lot of academic models exist to study such systems, I think this book makes the subject immediately accesible to the layman.