by Malcolm Gladwell ★★★★☆
On the 25th anniversary of the publication of the book that changed his life, Malcolm Gladwell revisits the theories he first introduced to the world in The Tipping Point with a fresh set of eyes. As a refresher—after all, it's been 25 years—the key concepts that Gladwell originally posited in his seminal work were three: "The Law of the Few", which Gladwell describes as the criticality of the contributions of a small set of "connectors", "mavens", and "salesmen" to help an epidemic take hold; "The Stickiness Factor", which focuses on the level of memorability of a topic contributing to its staying power; and "The Power of Context", focusing on the impact of environment on an epidemic.
While Gladwell still sees value in those concepts (and why wouldn't he—he's built a career off of them!), he admits in the introductory Author's Note that too much had changed in his worldview over the last 25 years, and the ideas he posited created even more questions for the present day author. Gladwell says the following:
"As I immersed myself again in the world of social epidemics, I realized I didn't want to return to the same ground I had covered in the The Tipping Point. The world seemed too different to my eyes....In some far corner of my mind, I discovered, I had never stopped arguing with myself about how best to explain and understand tipping points and their many mysteries.
And so I began again, with a fresh sheet of paper, and Revenge of the Tipping Point is the result: a new set of theories, stories and arguments about the strange pathways that ideas and behavior follow through our world."
If Gladwell were to truly start with a fresh sheet of paper, abandoning most of the source material from The Tipping Point, one might consider the title of this new book slightly disingenuous. However, while Gladwell may coin new terminology in "Revenge", his ideas have not drastically changed, and a closer comparison to the "new" concepts leaves them feeling more than a little familiar. In Revenge, Gladwell talks about "Overstories", a concept related to something that is happening beyond the social consciousness, specifically in a given area or location. That sounds strikingly similar to "The Power of Context" and the environmental impact on an epidemic, doesn't it? Gladwell talks about "Superspreaders" in Revenge, which is simply a retread of "The Law of the Few". And when he discusses "The Rise of Social Engineering", it would not be a great leap to map those concepts to "The Stickiness Factor". So maybe this is an actual Revenge of the Tipping Point, in that the stories are new, but the concepts have remained mostly constant over the last twenty-five years.
I listened to the audiobook for this one, and I will say that it was masterfully produced, and likely a more complete experience than print. In the ensuing years following The Tipping Point, Gladwell started an audio company, Pushkin Industries, that he uses for his Revisionist History podcast and also to produce this audiobook. As such, there are extra nuggets like intro/outro music for different sections of the book, plus a significant collection of audio footage of events that he discusses. In situations where he couldn't obtain actual audio files, he hired voice actors to recreate different scenes. The result is an audiobook experience that more closely resembles a podcast than a voice actor (or author, in this case) simply reading the text. If choosing between print and audio, definitely choose audio for this one.
Like so many millions of people, I enjoyed The Tipping Point, and if you liked that book, you'll almost certainly enjoy this one as well. While Gladwell may suggest that his ideas have changed, I'd argue that's debatable, but his penchant for telling a compelling story to establish a point remains constant all these years later. The tone and approach are the same, and the ability to tie together a variety of unconnected situations to make his argument is for the most part convincingly done. I don't know that there were as many "a-ha" moments in Revenge—probably because they had already been introduced in the original Tipping Point—but it's still an interesting work that will hold your attention.
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