Malcolm Gladwell, a journalist for the magazine The New Yorker, brought the world of pop-social psychology to the masses with the best selling novel The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference in January 2002. In this book, Gladwell examines cultural phenomena such as the success of Sesame Street, Paul Revere’s uncanny ability to influence Bostonians, and the resurgence of Hush Puppies shoes in suburban malls. Gladwell accomplishes this by relying on a series of interviews with subject matter experts rather than statistical data to discuss the combination of events that resulted in these movements “tipping”.
Because Gladwell drives his point home with the use of dialogue, rather than empirical evidence, the novel is much easier to follow and difficult to put down. Most importantly, the content is easily digestible for those without a background in social psychology, and serves as a great conversation starter with friends, family, and co-workers.
Personally, I found Gladwell’s second offering, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thought to be his best book to date. Blink can be summarized as an examination of our ability to make extremely accurate split-second decisions in a wide range of different scenarios.
Other releases by Malcolm Gladwell include Outliers: The Story of Success and What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures.
Brian Brown
