The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make... by Malcolm Gladwell

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Description

This celebrated New York Times bestsellernow poised to reach an even wider audience in paperbackis a book that is changing the way North Americans think about selling products and disseminating ideas. Gladwells new afterword to this edition describes how readers can constructively apply the... read more

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Summary

Tipping points are "the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable."<1> Gladwell defines a tipping point as a sociological term: "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point."<2> The book seeks to explain and describe the "mysterious" sociological... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Cast of Characters/Important People

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Memorable Quotes

“Six degrees of separation doesn't simply mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those few.”
Malcolm Gladwell

Setting & Important Places

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Organizations

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First Sentence

In the mid-1990s, the city of Baltimore was attacked by an epidemic of syphilis.

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Three Rules of Epidemics
Chapter 2: The Law of the Few: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen
Chapter 3: The Stickiness Factor: Sesame Street, Blue's Clues, the Educational Virus
Chapter 4: The Power of Context (Part One): Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime
Chapter 5: The Power of Context (Part Two): The Magic Number One Hundred and Fifty
Chapter 6: Case Study: Suicide, Smoking, and the Search for the Unsticky Cigarette
Chapter 8: Conclusion: Focus, Test, and Believe

Afterword: Tipping Point Lessons from the Real World
Endnotes
Acknowledgements
Index

Glossary

tipping point: the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable.
connectors: the people who "link us up with the world ... people with a special gift for bringing the world together."
mavens: "information specialists", or "people we rely upon to connect us with new information."
stickiness factor: the specific content of a message that renders its impact memorable