"The Tipping Point" is the biography of an idea, and the idea is quite simple: that many of
the problems we face - from murder to teenage delinquency to traffic jams - behave like
epidemics. They aren't linear phenomena in the sense that they steadily and predictably
change according to the level of effort brought to bear against them. They are capable of
sudden and dramatic changes in direction. Years of well-intentioned intervention may have
no impact at all, yet the right intervention - at just the right time - can start a cascade of
change. Many of the social ills that face us today, in other words, are as inherently volatile
as the epidemics that periodically sweep through the human population: little things can
cause them to "tip" at any time and if we want to understand how to confront and solve
them we have to understand what those "tipping points" are. In this study, Malcolm
Gladwell explores the ramifications of this. Not simply for politicians and policy-makers, his
method provides a way of viewing everyday experience and seeking to enable us to
develop strategies for everything from raising a child to running a company.