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

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars | 2,180 ratings

Price: 17.05

Last update: 12-26-2024


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

Elizabeth Watson
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and Enjoyable!!
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2024
Malcolm Gladwell continues to be one of my favorite authors. I highly recommend The Revenge of the Tipping Point. Gladwell's previous books are very good too.
Robert J. Ruttenberg
4.0 out of 5 stars good
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2024
Not as good as his first book, but still worth reading. I read it in one day so not bad
Neil Best
5.0 out of 5 stars Happy Gladwell Day!!!
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2024
Typical to Gladwell's other books, Gladwell takes the time to tell intricate stories underneath an overarching frame that is meant to help us make sense of the world around us. In this case, he not only wants us to understand the world, he also wants to revisit his first book 25 years later.

For the new material, it's what you've come to love about him as a storyteller: compelling descriptions of largely unknown anecdotes, provocative conclusions you aren't convinced should be true, redundancy to reinforce the concepts, and one large full circle to bring you back where you began. Although, as in all his other books, you feel better off having read the book because the world feels slightly less unknown or chaotic.

On revisiting the original Tipping Point, he spends some time reflecting in an introduction that serves mostly to frame the new book. He starts to reflect on how things (and he) has changed over the years, but it really services more as an introduction to the current work. I think this is actually an area where he could have done a better job for us as the reader by adding a prologue that ties the current ideas to the ideas from 25 years ago.

Gladwell spends considerable time as a podcaster and I think that comes through in his writing a bit.
For most of the chapters I could see them as transcripts of revisionist history as much as chapters in a book. For that reason I would say that he's probably better as a podcaster now than an author, but that perspective might be as much about my own growth as it is about his skills. In either case, the material is thought provoking and I would say an improvement over his more recent books as well.
ChrisC
1.0 out of 5 stars Not even close to the first
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2024
This book isn’t even close to the Tipping Point or Blink. I thought a lot of his ideas were a stretch. Poplar Grove- not an abnormality- plenty of neighborhoods think a like. I was extremely disappointed and irritated I bought the book.
Amazon Customer
1.0 out of 5 stars Loaded with actual interviews. Please stop doing this.
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2024
I really wish the folks creating audiobooks would stop trying to make them like podcasts. I'd like to be able to buy one of Malcolm G's audiobooks and listen to his amazing voice narrating the actual book without the nonsense filler made up of different interviews. It's frustrating.

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