
Member Reviews

REVENGE OF THE TIPPING POINT by Malcolm Gladwell discusses "Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering" twenty-five years after The Tipping Point was published. Gladwell writes that he re-immersed himself in "the world of social epidemics" and discovered a "new set of theories, stories, and arguments about the strange pathways that ideas and behavior follow through our world." In terms of newer content, he focuses in part on "overstories" – the idea, like the upper portion or canopy in a forest, of a big picture perspective to better discern patterns and behavior changes. He also makes numerous references to the COVID pandemic and the notion of superspreaders. Throughout, he shares a variety of stories and circumstances from South Florida (where he says Miami is "ground zero for this extraordinary epidemic of [Medicare] criminality") to the Harvard women's rugby team (when he argues about how colleges use sports to manipulate group proportions) to frequent references to the opioid epidemic and the Sackler family. Gladwell incorporates charts, graphs and data as well as devoting more than ten percent of the book to endnotes and an index. REVENGE OF THE TIPPING POINT received a starred review from Kirkus. Interested readers may also want to turn to titles by the Heath brothers like Switch, Decisive, 2017's The Power of Moments or 2022's Making Numbers Count.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell!

Revenge of the Tipping Point is my first Gladwell book, so I can't compare it to his other work. My only experience with Gladwell was listening to him on Conan's podcast.
Revenge highlights a few epidemics including COVID, bank robberies, and an onslaught of suicides within a public school system and then synthesizes lessons and patterns from them to show how the current opioid Cristina the U.S. came to be.
The author uses a conversational tone which is not my personal cup of tea, but I'm well aware that it makes nonfiction, especially dark subject matter like teen suicide and drug overdose deaths more palatable to the average reader.
Recommend for people who like to know how present events came to be.

Really? Twenty-five years since The Tipping Point was published? There is something magical to me about readable social science and the impact of social communication. If you read/remember the original and enjoyed it, you will love this follow-up: Revenge of The Tipping Point.
I know some academics have issue with his methodology, personality, whatever/ I con't really care, this is just fascinating stuff. HIGHLY recommended. Five stars.

Fascinating look at another aspect of the Tipping Point. I enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's writing. I like the way he gathers examples and tells stories that illustrate his point. Gathering all the threads together at the end. I highly recommend this one. His stories always stay with me and I see examples all around me. Very engaging writer!

This was pretty much what I expected from Gladwell. This is readable social science and contains plenty of food for thought. Libraries will most certainly buy this. Gladwell's treatment of social media communication and miscommunication is quite thought-provoking. The power that exists in social media communication is quite terrifying.

I wasn't sure we needed more Gladwell, but it feels like Gladwell wrote this book with that in mind. He corrects some things, and this is very much worth reading.

I have a lot of friends, especially those in academia, who don’t have very nice things to say about Gladwell’s methodology or how he reaches his conclusions. With that, he is a very good writer with a knack for finding interesting stories and synthesizing them . I came away unconvinced of the big TED talk conclusions he makes about overstories and the one third rule, but I enjoyed the tales he told. I have seen Den of Thieves so I knew a bit about bank robbery epidemic in Los Angeles, but I really enjoyed him telling the story of entrepreneurial Crips and how they revolutionized the bank heist. Similarly I have surface familiarity with the Opioid crisis and Florida Medicare fraud, but the specific stories Gladwell picked and the way he told them, were both fascinating and infuriating. I have worked in higher education, and his particular take on the way schools use niche sports as a form of Affirmative Action for the wealthy and privileged made my teeth grind. It is an interesting framing too, with the first Tipping Point book being about the positive ways small changes can lead to bigger ones, this was more of a post COVID book about the tragic ways both literal and figurative epidemics can spread. The people who hate Gladwell will continue to hate him, but if you have enjoyed his previous books or his podcast, this has a lot to recommend.

Twenty five years after The Tipping Point, Gladwell revisits the lessons from that book with a new lens. As always, it is a great mix of storytelling and social science in a totally enjoyable writing style. With this we get a guide to make sense of our modern world.

So fun to read this so long after the original -- and so relevant to our modern era. I'm glad he's still thinking in his epiphanic way...

Revenge of the Tipping Point
by Malcolm Gladwell
Pub Date: October 1, 2024
Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
Twenty-five years after the publication of his groundbreaking first book, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a brand-new volume that reframes the lessons of The Tipping Point in a startling and revealing light.
This is worth a re read, I highly recommend it.