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

While the soldiers who liberated the German concentration camps at the end of World War II saw the horrors and the magnitude of the killing, the general population didn’t pick up on it until the TV miniseries “Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss” hit the airwaves in 1978. Prior to this, few people were even familiar with the term.

A similar thing happened with the general acceptance of gays by the population that’s due to the TV sitcom “Will and Grace.”It aired from 1998 until 2006 and told the story of roommates. One was a gay man, and the other was a straight woman. Will had none of the gay stereotypes, unlike his gay friend. Will was so likable that gay marriage tripled during the show’s run

During the 1950s, many blacks moved to Northern cities as the result of Jim Crow laws and even lynchings in the segregated South. As they purchased houses in white neighborhoods, whites moved out in droves, hence the term “white flight.”

The final story deals with the hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths caused by the overprescription of OxyContin. Thanks to the effective marketing of Purdue Pharma and the small number of physicians prescribing it in large quantities, many Americans overdosed at a rate higher than any other country. It’s also a tale of unintended consequences that Gladwell details here.

Malcolm has been a staff writer with The New Yorker magazine since 1996. From 1987 to 1996, he was a reporter with the Washington Post, where he covered business, science, and then served as the newspaper’s New York City bureau chief. He graduated from the University of Toronto, Trinity College, with a degree in history. He was born in England, grew up in rural Ontario, and now lives in New York City.
He is also the author of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference,, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,, and Outliers: The Story of Success. They were all number one New York Times bestsellers. Click the above links for my summaries.