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Taylor, July 11, 2008 (view all comments by Taylor)
The Tipping Point offers an intriguing perspective on how buying trends, social trends, and other patterns of behavior occur as a result of a few people: connectors, mavens, and salesmen. I think the author supports his claim really well with the data he draws on. I found the book intriguing because the author makes the concepts easy to follow and shows how societal trends are shaped by just a few people who help tip the rest of us to what those trends are.
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ERoberts, January 28, 2007 (view all comments by ERoberts)
The title says it all: "How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference." I can remember many times when one person has done one thing that was "new" or "different" and it spread like wildfire. This book really helps explain why and how this happens.
I highly recommend it!
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (16 of 26 readers found this comment helpful)
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Used Hardcover
Malcolm Gladwell
0 stars -
0 reviews
$10.95
In Stock
Product details
288 pages
Little Brown and Company -
English9780316316965
Reviews:
"Staff Pick"
by Dave,
Somewhere along the way to guru-dom, Malcolm Gladwell got tagged as a business writer. Fair enough — The Tipping Point speaks more powerfully to the principles of succesful marketing than any pedestrian semester in the classroom. But while raves from Fortune, Business Week, and Management Today fortified his coronation on corporate campuses worldwide, how many business books also garner similar praise from Us magazine?
In The Tipping Point, the author set out to describe how ideas, products, messages, and behaviors travel through culture. In Blink, his follow-up, he considers how effective decisions are made. "I like looking at things that we take for granted," Gladwell explained during a visit to Powell's. "I'm not interested in the exotic. Neither of these books is about the exotic."
Nor is either strictly about business. Graffiti on subway cars, children's television programming, lovelorn suicides in Micronesia, facial expressions, symphony orchestras, indicators of a successful marriage; Gladwell's appeal can be traced directly to his studied obsession with familiar objects and events, and his remarkable talent for synthesizing complicated ideas into compelling stories.
by Dave
"Review"
by Seattle Times,
"A terrifically rewarding read."
"Review"
by Time Out,
"As a business how-to, The Tipping Point is truly superior, brimming with new theories on the science of manipulation."
"Review"
by San Francisco Chronicle,
"Gladwell has a knack for rendering complex theories in clear, elegant prose, and he makes a charismatic tour guide."
"Review"
by Alan Wolfe, The New York Times Book Review,
"[A] lively, timely and engaging study of fads....Gladwell...has a knack for explaining psychological experiments clearly; The Tipping Point is worth reading just for what it tells us about how we try to make sense out of the world."
"Review"
by Chicago Tribune,
"[A] fascinating account...valuable..."
"Review"
by Daily Telegraph (London),
"A wonderful page-turner about a wonderfully offbeat study of that little-understood phenomenon, the social epidemic."
"Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"While it offers a smorgasbord of intriguing snippets...this volume betrays its roots as a series of articles for The New Yorker, where Gladwell is a staff writer: his trendy material feels bloated and insubstantial in book form."
"Review"
by Business Week,
"It's hard not to be persuaded by Gladwell's thesis. Not only does he assemble a fascinating mix of facts in support of his theory...but he also manages to weave everything into a cohesive explanation of human behavior....There's little doubt that the material will keep you awake."
"Review"
by Richard Lacayo, Time,
"The Tipping Point assembles talking points from childhood development, marketing, and social epidemiology, and holds them up at an angle that lets one distant notion attach to another....An ingenious guide."
"Review"
by Timothy Noah, Washington Monthly,
"The thrust of Gladwell's book is that seemingly small gestures can have fantastically large and rapid outcomes....The Tipping Point could well prove to be an influential text for political activists."
"Review"
by Deidre Donahue, USA Today,
"An elegant exploration of how social epidemics work, whether they are fashion trends, diseases, or behavior patterns such as crime."
"Synopsis"
by Libri,
This celebrated New York Times bestseller — now poised to reach an even wider audience in paperback — is a book that is changing the way Americans think about selling products and disseminating ideas.
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.
