Rating: 
Summary: Informative
Review: There are some flacid sections in this book but I'm giving it 5 stars, because the parts that are good are really good and very eye-opening. I heard the author interviewed on Johnny Rotten's "Rotten Radio" and Johnny Rotten raved about the book so much, I had to get it. He was right in his assessment of it. I'm glad I got it. It holds information that might in fact change your life. (And to anyone who feels like a hermit-loner if you score low on the "connector" test, famous rock star Johnny Rotten said he only scored a 6, which is about as low as you can get! I at least scored higher than that!)
Rating: 
Summary: fabulous insights for students of communication
Review: as a student of communication, i found the book particulary interesting. the chapter on stickiness makes good read with examples from mainstream television. most often theories are presented in a way that cannot be translalted into real life situations, but this book is clearly different. i feel the book is clealy a must for people in advertising, market research and students of communication.
Rating: 
Summary: A match lights a fire, but a connector, maven and salesman..
Review: aren't representative of the world we know and live in. In the sense that not all of us realize the potential cause and effect these types of people have on tidal waves (trends) in the world. there can be good as well as bad, the author left out the bad part--enter: the Internet, this was purposely left out to help redeem the qualities of the book and its nature by which all tipping points happen becuase of one or a combination of these three types of individuals in our society--not so! there are quitisential ways in which one can use other methods of communication (i.e., the iNet) to dispose of ideals and trends in the market...please author, when thinking of writing your next book, please cover all the bases. we can't please everyone all of the time, but you can't just fill pages either with meaningless studies that do not validate your presumptious assumptions. other than that, i found the expamples (stories) of American tipping points somewhat enlightening. oh yeah, and leave the bigotry at home.
Rating:
Summary: Profound or Fluff?
Review: On the surface, this book is pop science for newspaper readers. It has an adequate index and many source notes, but few will mistake it for a refereed paper in a scientific journal. It is pleasant to read, entertaining, and doesn't make great mental demands on the reader. However, the reader might be surprised that the author, in describing the large effects of small changes, didn't mention Edward Lorenz' work on the Butterfly Effect. Mr. Gladwell's relating the results of folding a paper fifty times is not surprising to someone who has heard the story of the beggar who was granted one wish by a Prince: "Please, sir, give me a grain of rice on the first square of a chess board. Then, double the amount on each succeeding square." Dismissing The Tipping Point out of hand, though, might be . . . mind you, might be . . . a huge mistake. Suspension of judgement is usually needed to discover something really, really big. Consider, the Earth moving. Could anything be sillier? Or, riding a light beam. Loony stuff, if ever there was. Yet Galileo and Einstein used these ideas to gain eternal fame. Is it possible that fixing broken windows could severely reduce crime? Can humans who are Connectors and ideas that are Sticky really have tremendous consequences for a nation? I don't know. But, I have an idea. Fortune (June 12, 2000) had an article on crime in Russia, "Capitalism In a Cold Climate". Big crime . . . Bad crime . . . Overwhelming crime! What better test for the ideas in this book than to apply them in Russia. Is suggesting attacking such big problems with seemingly flimsy ideas really making fun of the ideas? Not at all. Atomic bomb explosions started as ideas scratched on paper. Space craft launches started as ideas scratched on paper. Science advances by someone proposing ideas, then someone testing them. Mr. Gladwell has proposed several ideas. Let's test them to see if they are profound or fluff.
Rating:
Summary: Well-written; Interesting Jumping Off Point
Review: I personally picked up this book for some ideas on how to market a show I'm doing, and I found it to be very helpful. I happen to be a writer who believes simplicity in writing is best. Therefore, I found Mr. Gladwell's style engaging, and to my advantage, it was easily absorbed. His theories can be easily applied to real world situations. I have become more interested in the theories and will use the bibliography to find more reading material. I thought, however, this was a good starting point.
Rating:
Summary: Has the "Tipping Point" Tipped?
Review: For a moment, after reading the mammoth reviews in the other "tipping point" categories, I suffered the thought, "What could I possibly add that would in any way help the reader of these reviews?" But then it dawned on me that the book's sales performance is going to speak loudest. So think about this now. Any author that proposes to teach and write about the nature of epidemics had better have his message TIP! The best demonstration of the worthiness of a book on how epidemics are started is if it sells in epidemic proportions. As of this review, the February 2000 edition was ranked #18 on Amazon's sales. That information ought to be worth something! Now catch on to my enthusiasm when I tell you that this book is not a sham! Check out today's numbers and see for yourself. The book is clearly a boon to any intellectual who not only enjoys mental stimulation, but also deeply strives to understand the mechanics of the major forces influencing daily life. With all of the fast and furious changes taking place each and every day, population explosions, web developments and so on, the ideas in this book can have the effect of slowing down what is otherwise seen as the blurry "Wheel of Progress." The wheel may always spin, faster and faster even, but after reading "The Tipping Point", you'll be the one who can still see the spokes. And perhaps, one of the few, who can influence an epidemic....or two. One last point that I have found absolutely fascinating and which I have not heard mentioned anywhere else yet can be found on the front cover of the book.....A MATCH. Do you realize what effect that one little match can have on you? It's certainly not an arbitrary device. It was placed there with the firm intention of making the book more visually sticky. A simple little match. A match! I hope this helped.
Rating:
Summary: Good starting point for research, but the book is juvenile
Review: The most facinating thing about this book is the references to social research studies that have been done through the decades. Much that I had never heard of, the bibliography is a good reference. The book itself however is written too plainly and comes off mostly as a boring read, other than the direct facts from research studies. The book keeps reading as if it's filler, like a high school student filling up a research paper because it has a certain page length requirement to meet. The revelations of the book are intriguing, but I would have liked a more substantial read, with more facts and specific results, the reduction of facts Gladwell tries to reveal are too watered down, obviously life is much more complicated that the conclusions let on.
Rating:
Summary: Astonishing
Review: The Tipping Point is one of those rare books that change the way you think about everything. It makes you see the world in a different way. It has a combination of explanation with vivid, often funny, real-world examples, the book sets out to explain nothing less than why human beings behave the way they do. The Tipping Point is for anyone who cares about how society works and how we can make it better. It is a wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person thinks about the world around him or her. I recommend it to every thinking person. :)
Rating:
Summary: Making the Tipping Point Tip
Review: For a moment, after reading the other mammoth reviews, I suffered the thought, "What could I possibly add that would in any way help the reader of these reviews?" But then it dawned on me that the book's sales performance is going to speak loudest. So think about this now. Any author that proposes to teach about the nature of epidemics and doesn't employ the principles himself is a fraud! Now catch on to my enthusiasm when I tell you that this book is not a sham! Check out the numbers and see for yourself. Or perhaps it hasn't tipped at this point, but I'm certain it will. As for why? The book is clearly a boon to any intellectual who not only enjoys mental stimulation, but also deeply strives to understand the mechanics of the major forces influencing daily life. With all of the fast and furious changes taking place each and every day, population explosions, web developments and so on, the ideas in this book can have the effect of slowing down what is otherwise seen as the blurry "Wheel of Progress." The wheel may always spin, faster and faster even, but after reading "The Tipping Point", you'll be the one who can still see the spokes. And perhaps, one of the few, who can influence an epidemic....or two. One last point that I have found absolutely fascinating and which I have not heard mentioned anywhere else yet can be found on the front cover of the book.....A MATCH. Do you realize what effect that one little match can have on you? It's certainly not an arbitrary device. It was placed there with the firm intention of making the book more visually sticky. A simple little match. A match! I hope this helped.
Rating: 
Summary: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Differe
Review: Gladwell's book attempts to place the same framework on pop culture and public health; it doesn't work well. Equating the wearing of Hush Puppies and cigarette smoking to syphilis and AIDS trivializes the real epidemics. A book should be more than just a long magazine article.
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