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Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

By: Malcolm Gladwell

Paperback:  301 pages

Publisher: Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (January, 2002)

Formats: Paperback, Kindle, Audio

CE hours: 9

Taking the course:

This course includes reading the book, Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, and then completing the CE test (The actual book is not included in the cost of this CE course). You can log in and take the test at any time. The test-help feature is not available for the Book Courses; however, you can take the test as many times as necessary until you pass. As with all of our courses, you pay after you have completed all the course requirements.

Book Description (From the Publisher):

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.

Example Book Reviews

(The Tipping Point) has a dazzling ability to find commonality in disparate fields of study. As he displays again in this entertaining and illuminating look at how we make snap judgments about people's intentions, the authenticity of a work of art, even military strategy, he can parse for general readers the intricacies of fascinating but little-known fields like professional food tasting (why does Coke taste different from Pepsi?). Gladwell's conclusion, after studying how people make instant decisions in a wide range of fields from psychology to police work, is that we can make better instant judgments by training our mind and senses to focus on the most relevant facts and that less input (as long as it's the right input) is better than more. Perhaps the most stunning example he gives of this counterintuitive truth is the most expensive war game ever conducted by the Pentagon, in which a wily marine officer, playing "a rogue military commander" in the Persian Gulf and unencumbered by hierarchy, bureaucracy and too much technology, humiliated American forces whose chiefs were bogged down in matrixes, systems for decision making and information overload. But if one sets aside Gladwell's dazzle, some questions and apparent inconsistencies emerge. If doctors are given an algorithm, or formula, in which only four facts are needed to determine if a patient is having a heart attack, is that really educating the doctor's decision-making ability or is it taking the decision out of the doctor's hands altogether and handing it over to the algorithm? Still, each case study is satisfying, and Gladwell imparts his own evident pleasure in delving into a wide range of fields and seeking an underlying truth. -Publishers Weekly

A terrifically rewarding read. --Seattle Times

A wonderful page-turner about a wonderfully offbeat study of that little-understood phenomenon, the social epidemic. --Daily Telegraph (London)

Gladwell has a knack for rendering complex theories in clear, elegant prose, and he makes a charismatic tour guide. --San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author

Appearing on the Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people, Malcolm Gladwell is a Canadian journalist based in New York. He is a bestselling author of many books, a speaker, and has been on job as a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. His books, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference (2000), Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), and What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009) have all appeared on The New York Times bestsellers list. His works deal with research in the areas of psychology, social psychology and sociology. On June 30, 2011, Gladwell was appointed to the Order of Canada.

In addition to being recognized and appreciated for his works, Gladwell has also been acknowledged with prestigious honors such as the American Sociological Association’s first Award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues in 2007, an honorary degree from University of Waterloo in 2007 and another honorary degree from the University of Toronto in 2011. Currently, Malcolm Gladwell continues to write for The New Yorker.