Rating: 
Summary: Manipulation 101
Review: This book goes into the scientific aspects of trends, and how to manipulate the public into "buying it." Basically, it's a PR book with a twist. As a prerequisite, I recommend Michael Levine's "Guerrilla PR" before tackling "Tipping." You will have a better grasp of the concepts in this book with a crash course in PR beforehand.
Rating: 
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: A good source of interesting literature, covering a diverse array of themes, and with a fluid style to match. Nonetheless, I could have given five stars, but disagreed with some of Gladwell's assumptions and conclusions, which I thought were apocryphal. For instance, Gladwell cites research undertaken by a great number of scientists to allegedly 'prove' that the role of one's parents is not as important as the environment in which a person is raised in determining his/her eventual character/personality. Mr. Gladwell, do you think it was a fluke that all the Kennedy men were highly driven, risk takers? Or would you ascribe it to their genetics, as you appear to do in several instances? Mr. Gladwell also mentions that accents of children in homes of immgrants differ from their parents, and therefore, the environment is stronger than the home in which they are raised. Another fallacy Mr. Gladwell. Look at the children of immigrants. Try to take crime statistics of those who live in Harlem and other troubled spots, verses mainstream population. Guess what? There's a difference. Mr. Gladwell himself will agree with this, since he's written about it extensively in other periodicals. I subscribe to the view that this is something which cannot be tested scientifically, and anyone who is familiar with Karl Popper's theories will know what I'm alluding to. Popper asserts that it only takes one scenario that nullifies a hypothesis in order to make a thesis invalid and unscientific. I certainly think education, genetics, parenting, and environment play a role, though one cannot empirically prove which one has a greater influence, and efforts to address one theory will be fallacious from the start.I also did not appreciate the author's commingling of disparate subjects in a way that makes you wonder whether he's cutting and pasting from previous articles he's written (Mr. Gladwell after all writes for the NewYorker). That, unfortunately, is my suspicion. A case in point is when lessons in crime reduction in New York, are juxtaposed with sales lessons from AirWalk shoes all of which are attempting to answer the reason why epidemics tip. The concluding chaper and remarks are brilliantly written, with sufficient reminders of the author's central theses, i.e., the Law of the Few, the Stickiness factor, Mavens, etc. People that are new to the idea of the 6 degrees of separation, behavioral psychology, etc., will get an interesting dose of new approaches to understanding how psychology impacts our day-to-day decisions. Highly recommended, but with some reservation specifically with regard to some conclusions whose accuracy I strongly question.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing read for anyone who's a member of society
Review: Why do some ideas, products, or styles catch on and suddenly become wildly popular across the country? Gladwell fills his book with true-life examples in an easy to read style. If you've ever wondered what makes something "cool" while something else is "geeky" and why we Americans fickly latch on to trendy things like we do, this work offers some great insights. An absorbing read for anyone who is curious about what makes people make the (sometimes inexplicable) choices they do.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Somewhat Useful
Review: Malcolm Gladwell wrote The Tipping Point to explain why small things often cause an idea, product, tv show, book, etc. to suddenly become somewhat popular. Gladwell tells us that epidemics are caused or changed by seemingly small or unrelated things; by epidemics he usually means fads, but sometimes means cultural changes or true epidemics. He says that they are affected by a relatively few number of people (social butterflies, experts and salesmen), the "stickiness factor" (how interesting or contagious the actual thing being transmitted is) and the power of context (external factors). The best part of the book is Gladwell's writing style. He writes this serious non-fiction book in a very light, conversational, almost stream of consciousness style. While writing about a general topic to explain his points, Gladwell interrupts himself to give anecdotes to support all his points. These anecdotes are always interesting--there is not a single fad or epidemic that he discusses that did not hold my attention--even if they do not always support the larger point he is making. Therefore, no matter what you think of his arguments, after you read this book, you will be intellectually stimulated and have a lot of information about subjects as random as suicide rates in the South Pacific and Hush Puppies. The weak point is that Gladwell is obviously overselling the idea that he has come up with something novel. Hard sciences and, in mathematics, chaos theory long ago figured out that little things can make a surprisingly big difference in almost unrelated events. We instinctively know all these things about human society as well. We all know that some people know everyone and transmit their views to everyone they know. We all know that some people are great salesmen or are experts in arcane things and that these people have great influence. We all know in our lives that small almost random tweaks can make the difference between an idea or product succeeding and failing. We've all seen that adding color or changing a pie chart to a bar chart, etc. can make the difference in a presentation for work or that adding or subtracting a character on TV can make the difference (look at what a difference an actress cutting her hair made on the TV show "Felicity"). Nevertheless, Gladwell does a great job of assigning words to all these things that we know by instinct. And we can ignore the fact that he is a classic "salesman" and is trying to make us believe that he has come up with new ideas rather than a new vocabulary and interesting anecdotes.
Rating:
Summary: A useful, provocative book
Review: I picked this book up when I remembered Gladwell's name from some interesting New Yorker articles. As an educational psychologist who studies creativity, I found Gladwell's "theory" to be provocative, especially for an author who doesn't use the scientific jargon. I taught a senior seminar on creativity this spring, and I dusted off my copy of this book and assigned it to the students. They were a high powered group, so I was a bit worried that they would dislike the pop psychology aspect of Gladwell's work. But they loved it -- several wrote on their course evaluations that it was one of the most provocative books they read during their college careers. I think the lesson learned is that (as other reviewers have noted) the material is aimed at a layperson audience, and someone reading it for scientific insight will be disappointed. But the book is a great stimulus for discussion about several points, including (1) how Gladwell's theory compares to research on creativity, (2) the value of jargon-free interpretations of the social sciences, and (3) the veracity of Gladwell's theory and numerous examples. I went in with a reasonable view of the book's usefulness, and I was quite pleased with the result.
Rating: 
Summary: How self-promotion and excessive behavior start trends
Review: A book about word-of-mouth and how trends get started? Within the tasteful cover and generously-spaced type, is a sophomoric analysis of social dynamics and their possible influences on generating critical mass. Praised by so-called literary elite, the book's authoritive prose gives merit to a 'certain point of view' about social behaviour and overall trends. Beneath the fluff is simply an exercise in book publishing and maximizing profit. Save your shekels.
Rating:
Summary: This is a best seller?
Review: The title and the cover are quite catchy. The book is more sociologically based, with some tidbits on marketing. Discusses the fact that small acts can cause "tipping points" or major change. Not totally convincing but possible. Examples (and patriotic ones at that) are very stretched out and could be more to the point. The book might be of more interest if one is a sociologist and doesn't mind some fluff, but frankly I thought the book was mediocre.
Rating:
Summary: Great book as a first reading on the subject
Review: This book is a very entertaining piece of education and a great incentive to read more on the subject. The style makes it a fast reading book that sticks into your memory. However, it lacks scientific rigor in many demonstrations and research stays too much on a "personal level" as the author relies more on personal or friends' exemples than on research. More marketing cases illustrating the "tipping point" would have been a great addition to this book. But it may be up to us, marketers to build these cases !
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Thought Provoking
Review: Much like his often published essays in the New Yorker, this book is erudite without being preachy or ostentatious. Gladwell writes with unerring purpose yet infuses everything with his wry humor. The ideas in this book regarding marketing, how an idea or a product turns 'epidemic' are brilliantly thought through and well-illustrated. Not only is this a book about the nature of marketing and 'hype', but it's also a well-considered meditation on public opinion and its nature. Some of Gladwell's attempts to demystify how a small idea or a product can reach its 'tipping point' are less than persuasive, but all in all, this is a book of startling insights and acumens.
Rating:
Summary: Succinct and thought provoking
Review: I went into this book with absolutely no expectations. I added it to my wishlist after a random encounter with it at a bookstore, and received it soon after without having heard anything else about it. Obviously, I thought it looked interesting, but never would have guessed how into it I would quickly become (devouring it in only 3 days). Contrary to what some of the critics that have written reviews on this web site say, I found much of this book to be very surprising and original (and I was a sociology major during my undergrad days). While much of the data that Mr. Gladwell relies on isn't new (e.g., studies of Sesame Street in the 1960s), I think he pulls it all together in a very coherent and accessible way. An important skill for a social scientist to have is to be able to pull together a number of different ideas that people may already know about on their own, but then synthesize them in a way that leads to new and exciting conclusions. This book succeeds at that. Furthermore, the case studies that Mr. Gladwell relies on to make his points were fascinating stories in and of themselves. A major reason that I kept wanting to read this book was simply to see more examples of people acting in ways that I never would have predicted. That isn't to say that some of the criticisms made in other reviews aren't valid. I did sometimes question whether these findings could have predictive value. The book is only valuable if it actually provides information on how to cause a "tipping point," not just evaluate why one happened after the fact. In this sense, the book is a mixed bag. I found the discussion on what types of personalities it takes to make something's popularity explode interesting, but am not sure how I would apply it. Whether or not these key people end up adopting and pushing an idea or product would seem to be beyond its creator's power. It's a matter of luck. But as Mr. Gladwell makes clear, this may be the most important part of causing a "tipping point." Other parts of the book were more useful. For instance, nothing could be simpler to understand and apply than the chapter on how keeping a group's membership below 150 people keeps that group connected in a way that a larger group can never be. That may be an intuitive idea generally, but nothing is intuitive about the number 150. It's a great part of the book because it's such a simple idea, but one that never would have occurred to me at this level of specificity without a lot of trial and error. Another problem with the book is that Mr. Gladwell may have ignored some examples that didn't fit into his model. For instance, he gives the New York City police force all of the credit for the major decline in crime that the city saw during the 1990s. However, as I understand it, crime decreased across the country. It's possible that the decrease in crime in NY would have happened even without the police efforts that Mr. Gladwell discusses. Maybe, maybe not, but Mr. Gladwell should have distinguished the decrease in crime in NY from the decrease that was taking place everywhere. I had a law professor once who often lamented theories that explained everything. Usually, a theory that appears to explain everything actually explains nothing at all. Mr. Gladwell would have done himself a favor by showing why the decrease in crime in NY was interesting not only when looked at on its own, but also when compared to decreases in crime that were taking place in other locations. Overall though, I really enjoyed reading this book, and would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in human behavior. I never would have thought that I'd describe a book like this as a page-turner, but it was.
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