Rating: 
Summary: Keep it short, please
Review: I wonder whether Internet surfing has done permanent damage to my patience as a book reader. Tipping point is a good book, and the idea that the author put forward is quite original and worth further exploration. It would deserve a 5 star rating if the author cut the length of the book by half, or more. I often had the urge to tell the author, when reading the book, "yes, I got the point, please move on!".
Rating: 
Summary: Contrived And Artifical
Review: Mr. Gladwell's ideas are really not all that original: many are based on old sociology academic work. He makes arguments without providing ample evidence to back them up(it seems they are really designed for sound bites) and the book has an artifical flavour.
Rating:
Summary: title says it all and then does it
Review: I have been teaching marketing for over 15 years and although most of the concepts espoused in the book are not original, I found the book to be extremely entertaining and useful in streamlining my views on this subject. Gladwell uses the concept of the diffusion of innovations to explain how ideas, trends, and even radical change in human behavior are spread by "little things." Taken to the extreme it leaves a feeling of helplessness since from a marketing standpoint no matter how good everything is, ultimately you have to reach the "tipping point" that could conceivably be as trivial as having that "right-looking" package. The book is not meant to be an academic treatise, and some of the other reviews that test it against that standard are missing the point. The book itself attests to the power of Gladwell's argument in that a catchy title is what is tipping the scale to spread an old idea and make it seemingly a new one.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating!
Review: The all subject is very interesting and Malcolm puts a great spin around it with lots of concrete examples. The overall principle exposed in the book is applicable to a lot of situations and the examples are very interesting findings around human behaviors. Although the story flow could be sometime more structured, the style is great and makes it very easy to read and very clear.
Rating:
Summary: A Startling Study of Social Epidemics
Review: What do the mid-90s Baltimore Syphilis epidemic and the much publicized drop in New York's crime rate have in common? What was the secret of Sesame Street's success in the late 60s, and why did everyone started wearing Hush Puppies in 95? Why are there more suicides per capita in the South Pacific island of Micronesia than anywhere else in the world, and why has teen smoking in the United States risen 73 percent since 1988? These and other fascinating social epidemics are discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in what is probably the most readable book on 'threshold models' in the world. Fascinating, concise and unputdownable, The Tipping Point has tipped itself into a much deserved international, best-selling first place.
Rating:
Summary: Socio-babble
Review: For the most part, I found this work (like many in the field of sociology) to be a collection of convenient observations masking itself as real scientific work.
Rating:
Summary: clever self-marketing at work
Review: This publisher is clearly benefiting from having a splash-page blurb -- I'm sure it's getting lots of clicks -- but take a careful look at the sample pages before you buy. We got suckered in -- what author doesn't want to know more about selling his or her own book? -- but there's really not much here. Buzz is one thing, but having a quality product to create a buzz about is even better. This book is a perfect example of the former without the latter. Without some sort of underlying substance, buzz is just a lot of noise. Save your money.
Rating:
Summary: Simple, Fresh, Powerful
Review: REVIEW: I really enjoy books with a fresh concept that puts the light bulb off in your head and has you shaking it up and down from the get go. For me, that was this book. The basic theme of the book is fairly simple, but like many simple things it is easy to understand, but difficult to master. The main concept is that ideas, products, and messages (i.e. shared human information) spread just like viruses do and the point at which the virus gains critical momentum to become an epidemic is called the Tipping Point. The book helps us understand how viruses and epidemics work (non-scientifically) - leading to analogies in how human information spreads and eventually "tips". This understanding we can use to make our own human information spreading efforts (e.g. public service messages, marketing messages) more effective. Why do some ideas start epidemics and others do not? What can we do to deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own? Tipping Point helps answer these questions.The only thing that kept me from giving this book 5 stars was that the author sometimes tried to teach too much and lost focus. He left the main theme and went too deep into subjects that need (and do) have many books written about them. One example is the topic of the importance of environment on children. His discussion was too deep for the purpose of this book yet not deep enough for what the subject deserves. While there are some deficiencies, Tipping Point may become a classic and has already brought new lexicon into our language (e.g. tipping and stickiness in relation to ideas in messages). I recommend it if the topic is important to you. STRENGTHS: The book is very simple (in a good way), entertaining, and easy to read. I also enjoyed the smaller size (~6x8in) of the hardback version - made it easy to carry to the park at lunchtime. Lots of interesting real world examples to the key points raised. The book also has a very detailed index. The writing is targeted to a broad audience and the content is not too niche. WEAKNESSES: I sometimes got the impression that the author was struggling to come up with enough material as some of the examples seem overly detailed and long. There was also a tendency, especially toward the end of the book, for the author to veer from the main purpose of the book and try to teach us some social lessons. Thus the book could have been more focused. Academics my dismiss the work as being unscientific. True, but the book is still practical. WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK: Every knowledge worker that wants to understand the way the world works a little better. Especially for those responsible for spreading messages or for trying to influence others' decisions (e.g. marketers). ALSO CONSIDER: Robert Cialdini - Influence: The Science of Persuasion (a classic); Seth Godin - The Idea Virus (enjoyed this one too); Elaine Hatfield - Emotional Contagion; Richard Koch - The 80/20 Principle; ; Don Peppers - One to One ______. I've only read the first two.
Rating:
Summary: Gladwell gets it right
Review: The great thing about this book is that Gladwell actually gets the science right while presenting information in an entertaining way. I loved this book!
Rating:
Summary: Example: applying one idea to my circumstances
Review: This book is so exciting to read I almost had to read it standing up. I was more fascinated in the way Mr. Gladwell finds amazing examples to illustrate his points than in the points as a whole. There are plenty of good overall reviews in this collection I thought I'd write about the way one of his ideas resonated in my life.
The idea: that you can decrease subway crime by arresting turnstile-jumpers and cleaning graffiti (by eliminating an environment in which it may appear that anything goes you can discourage potential criminals from thinking they can get away with it).
As I read that part of the book I felt a strong resonance with my own, disfunctional workplace. The absence of supervision among my once-capable coworkers has created an air of anything goes/nothing matters. I felt moved by this chapter to encourage the supervisors to dig in and let us all know that the little things we do contribute to the whole in ways more meaningful than we might have thought.
(The fact that my inept supervisors were unable to see the value of that idea does not reduce its worth in the slightest.)
Look at the website: www.gladwell.com
Buy the book, you'll love it.
| 
