Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars | 3,938 ratings

Price: 17.05

Last update: 04-17-2025


About this item

A lot has changed in 25 years. A quarter-century after the publication of his groundbreaking first book, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a brand-new volume that reframes the lessons of The Tipping Point in a startling and revealing light — this time in an immersive audio format that transports you, the listener, directly inside of each riveting story.

Why is Miami… Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena.

Through a series of gripping stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. As with his podcast Revisionist History and bestsellers Talking to Strangers and The Bomber Mafia, pressing play on this audiobook will bring each scene and story to life with vivid first-person accounts, captivating oral histories, illuminating moments from history past and present, and a cinematic original music score.

Take to the streets of Los Angeles with Malcolm to meet the world’s most successful bank robbers, rediscover a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visit the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and explore an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis.

Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell’s most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of the modern world. It’s time we took tipping points seriously.


Top reviews from the United States

  • Gary Moreau, Author
    5.0 out of 5 stars Truth is in the details.
    Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2024
    The title of this book could have been: “The Etiology of Change.” Etiology is a medical term meaning cause. And I use it here because Gladwell, as he did in the first Tipping Point, frames change in terms of an epidemic.

    The tipping point, of course, is the mass at which a duality moves inevitably, and often quickly, in the other direction. It’s important because all of existence is defined by dualities. Up is always accompanied by down. Left doesn’t exist without right. And so it is with the many social trends, such as housing, college acceptance, and the opioid crisis in which there are identifiable groups of individuals which share a distinguishing common trait (e.g. race, religion, addiction) within the larger group.

    The objective I believe the author is seeking is how to restore balance when imbalance shows its ugly mug. The search for balance is ubiquitous to nature because of the universal existence of dualities.

    The topics that Gladwell addresses (e.g., Why does Harvard have a women’s rugby team?) are as obscure as those he shared in the first book. And that alone makes the book informative and entertaining. He definitely has a nose for the obscurely interesting.

    And, as in all his books, the research is thorough and impeccable. He does, however, spend a lot of time quoting third parties in order to build his case. Perhaps more than necessary. I personally wish he spent more time expanding his conclusions. He has a strong enough reputation that he can assume our acceptance of his source observations.

    His conclusion, as I read it, is that we can understand far-reaching but perplexing social trends by looking into the details. The truth, or at least the greater truth, always hides there. And if we can uncover it, we can address the problem.

    Resolving the problem may not always be seen as “fair,” however. The solution, as he notes, is often counter-intuitive to society’s pre-defined solutions to the problem. And that’s where the book sometimes just stops. There are few real prescriptions for how to overcome that hurdle. I suspect Gladwell considered that to be beyond the scope of the book, but it did leave me wondering, “Okay, but what do I do with that?”

    To me, this is a book about context. We do tend to oversimplify everything in our everyday public discourse. And certainly in this election year the oversimplification is at a fevered pitch. We’re just yelling myths at each other. The world is far more complicated and nuanced than either political party is currently acknowledging.

    In that regard, this book is timely although Gladwell does not enter the political fray at any level. The book is more investigative journalism than opinion piece.

    Gladwell is lucid and profoundly curious. The book is an easy read, and you should be able to finish the book in just a couple of days. It is worth the time.
  • Michael
    4.0 out of 5 stars Different from the Tipping Point
    Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2024
    While very different from the The Tipping Point, the Revenge is still thought provoking. The subtitle is what is covered: overstories, superspreaders... while Gladwell counters some of the ideas from the original book, he expands the original ideas. Some of the wording is a bit cumbersome, but the ideas are very interesting. The explanation of why Harvard has so many athletic teams is worth the read.
  • Jeffrey L
    5.0 out of 5 stars Gladwell Revisits Tipping Points, and looks at the dark side
    Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2024
    Malcolm Gladwell returns by revisiting the topic of his first book: The Tipping Point. As he states right at the beginning (pg 7) "I want to look at the underside of the possibilites I explored so long ago. If the world can be moved by just the slightest push, then the person who knows where and when to push has real power."

    Gladwell writes the book in a style that will be familiar with anyone who has read his previous books. He is a gifted storyteller and each facet of the argument he is trying to make is introduced with a story.

    (Spoilers from here on out)

    Summary: Gladwell tries to find the mechanisms that explain the opioid epidemic in the US (prescription and illicit drugs). Gladwell shows how Purdue Pharma, along with guidance from the consulting firm McKinsey, leveraged certain concepts about the nature of epidemics to create the current crisis.

    Through the process he explores concepts including, "small town variation," "overstories" - which he explains is his word for something resembling a Zeitgeist, revisits "tipping points" and monocultures among other topics.

    Central to his perspective is the way that stories shape our perspective, and how those who tell stories can shape the public consciousness. He gives a number of examples that capture this vividly.

    Along the way he grapples with some knotty moral questions. He explores engaging with minor discrimination to prevent vicious discrimination. He raises the issue of better methods of identification of potentially leading to profiling disadvantaged groups (in his primary example, the COVID virus was more likely to spread from people who were elderly and overweight.) He has an interesting perspective on Ivy League schools like Harvard using sports teams to maintain the student balance that they desire.

    Why should you read this book?
    - Gladwell is a writer who is not scared to ask big questions or explore knotty issues. His discussions about discrimination and about the way that the introduction of Purdue's OxyContin gummies actually exacerbated the situation raises some challenging questions.
    - Gladwell's writing style is engaging and fun to read. I read the book over a 24-hour period and am sure many others will do the same
    - Gladwell brings up anecdotes and stories that are not well known and will likely cause you to reconsider how you see things that you thought you knew.

    Some other notes:
    - Gladwell has stated at public lectures that looking back, there are aspects of his earlier writing that he no longer agrees with. Gladwell is someone who is clearly constantly exploring and learning and is not afraid to change his perspective on topics. I view his writing as deeply thought provoking but do not assume they are hard facts. (In this book, I have a hard time seeing how Madden's triplicate forms would be considered an 'overstory' rather than a technical reality that impacted the drug epidemic.
    - Many of Gladwell's previous books have introduced ideas that were widely adopted (tipping point is just one of them), so I would expect ideas from this book to circulate pretty widely.
    - This book does not discuss how social media impacts public opinion. It never mentions 'fake news,' contemporary politics, or other aspects of modern society (in 2024) that I had expected from the title.

    Is it for children: The book talks about Medicare fraud, drug abuse, suicide, White Flight and the Holocaust, so there are quite a few heavy topics. I do not recall any profanity or sexual content.

    Conclusion: Gladwell has put out another fascinating book that spans a wide range of topics and is sure to leave you thinking. It is a quick, engaging read, even as some of the topics are quite heavy.

    As with Gladwell's other books, it is sometimes hard to tell if everything seems to be tying together neatly because in fact they do, or if it is Gladwell's skill as a writer that makes it seem so. Reviewing the notes I wrote on the book, there were aspects that I was not sure fit perfectly, though that may be an indication of the limits of my understanding of the book, rather than a flaw in the content.

    Overall, it is a fun read that is thought provoking. And as noted, because Gladwell is so widely read, it seems likely that elements of this book will become widely known and shared. Interestingly, he touches on some ideas from The Tipping Point but almost never references them directly or even acknowledges which ideas he discussed in his earlier book.

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