Revenge of the Tipping Level: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering
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(as of Jan 14, 2025 16:34:16 UTC – Particulars)
Loads has modified in 25 years. 1 / 4-century after the publication of his groundbreaking first guide, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a brand-new quantity that reframes the teachings of The Tipping Level in a startling and revealing gentle — this time in an immersive audio format that transports you, the listener, instantly inside of every riveting story.
Why is Miami… Miami? What does the heartbreaking destiny of the cheetah inform us about the way in which we elevate our kids? Why do Ivy League faculties care a lot about sports activities? What’s the Magic Third, and what does it imply for racial concord? On this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns to the topic of social epidemics and tipping factors, this time with the purpose of explaining the darkish aspect of contagious phenomena.
By means of a sequence of gripping tales, Gladwell traces the rise of a brand new and troubling type of social engineering. As together with his podcast Revisionist Historical past and bestsellers Speaking to Strangers and The Bomber Mafia, urgent play on this audiobook will deliver every scene and story to life with vivid first-person accounts, charming oral histories, illuminating moments from historical past previous and current, and a cinematic authentic music rating.
Take to the streets of Los Angeles with Malcolm to fulfill the world’s most profitable financial institution robbers, rediscover a forgotten tv present from the Seventies that modified the world, go to the location of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and discover an alternate historical past of two of the largest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid disaster.
Revenge of the Tipping Level is Gladwell’s most private guide but. Together with his attribute mixture of storytelling and social science, he affords a information to creating sense of the contagions of the fashionable world. It’s time we took tipping factors significantly.
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Prospects discover the guide participating and compelling. They recognize the thorough analysis and analytical writing fashion that gives info and information to help their factors. Readers describe the writing as simple to learn, concise, and gratifying.
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Gary Moreau, Author –
Truth is in the details.
The title of this book could have been: âThe Etiology of Change.â Etiology is a medical term meaning cause. And I use it here because Gladwell, as he did in the first Tipping Point, frames change in terms of an epidemic.The tipping point, of course, is the mass at which a duality moves inevitably, and often quickly, in the other direction. Itâs important because all of existence is defined by dualities. Up is always accompanied by down. Left doesnât exist without right. And so it is with the many social trends, such as housing, college acceptance, and the opioid crisis in which there are identifiable groups of individuals which share a distinguishing common trait (e.g. race, religion, addiction) within the larger group.The objective I believe the author is seeking is how to restore balance when imbalance shows its ugly mug. The search for balance is ubiquitous to nature because of the universal existence of dualities.The topics that Gladwell addresses (e.g., Why does Harvard have a womenâs rugby team?) are as obscure as those he shared in the first book. And that alone makes the book informative and entertaining. He definitely has a nose for the obscurely interesting.And, as in all his books, the research is thorough and impeccable. He does, however, spend a lot of time quoting third parties in order to build his case. Perhaps more than necessary. I personally wish he spent more time expanding his conclusions. He has a strong enough reputation that he can assume our acceptance of his source observations.His conclusion, as I read it, is that we can understand far-reaching but perplexing social trends by looking into the details. The truth, or at least the greater truth, always hides there. And if we can uncover it, we can address the problem.Resolving the problem may not always be seen as âfair,â however. The solution, as he notes, is often counter-intuitive to societyâs pre-defined solutions to the problem. And thatâs where the book sometimes just stops. There are few real prescriptions for how to overcome that hurdle. I suspect Gladwell considered that to be beyond the scope of the book, but it did leave me wondering, âOkay, but what do I do with that?âTo me, this is a book about context. We do tend to oversimplify everything in our everyday public discourse. And certainly in this election year the oversimplification is at a fevered pitch. Weâre just yelling myths at each other. The world is far more complicated and nuanced than either political party is currently acknowledging.In that regard, this book is timely although Gladwell does not enter the political fray at any level. The book is more investigative journalism than opinion piece.Gladwell is lucid and profoundly curious. The book is an easy read, and you should be able to finish the book in just a couple of days. It is worth the time.
Michael –
Different from the Tipping Point
While very different from the The Tipping Point, the Revenge is still thought provoking. The subtitle is what is covered: overstories, superspreaders… while Gladwell counters some of the ideas from the original book, he expands the original ideas. Some of the wording is a bit cumbersome, but the ideas are very interesting. The explanation of why Harvard has so many athletic teams is worth the read.
Jeffrey L –
Gladwell Revisits Tipping Points, and looks at the dark side
Malcolm Gladwell returns by revisiting the topic of his first book: The Tipping Point. As he states right at the beginning (pg 7) “I want to look at the underside of the possibilites I explored so long ago. If the world can be moved by just the slightest push, then the person who knows where and when to push has real power.”Gladwell writes the book in a style that will be familiar with anyone who has read his previous books. He is a gifted storyteller and each facet of the argument he is trying to make is introduced with a story.(Spoilers from here on out)Summary: Gladwell tries to find the mechanisms that explain the opioid epidemic in the US (prescription and illicit drugs). Gladwell shows how Purdue Pharma, along with guidance from the consulting firm McKinsey, leveraged certain concepts about the nature of epidemics to create the current crisis.Through the process he explores concepts including, “small town variation,” “overstories” – which he explains is his word for something resembling a Zeitgeist, revisits “tipping points” and monocultures among other topics.Central to his perspective is the way that stories shape our perspective, and how those who tell stories can shape the public consciousness. He gives a number of examples that capture this vividly.Along the way he grapples with some knotty moral questions. He explores engaging with minor discrimination to prevent vicious discrimination. He raises the issue of better methods of identification of potentially leading to profiling disadvantaged groups (in his primary example, the COVID virus was more likely to spread from people who were elderly and overweight.) He has an interesting perspective on Ivy League schools like Harvard using sports teams to maintain the student balance that they desire.Why should you read this book?- Gladwell is a writer who is not scared to ask big questions or explore knotty issues. His discussions about discrimination and about the way that the introduction of Purdue’s OxyContin gummies actually exacerbated the situation raises some challenging questions.- Gladwell’s writing style is engaging and fun to read. I read the book over a 24-hour period and am sure many others will do the same- Gladwell brings up anecdotes and stories that are not well known and will likely cause you to reconsider how you see things that you thought you knew.Some other notes:- Gladwell has stated at public lectures that looking back, there are aspects of his earlier writing that he no longer agrees with. Gladwell is someone who is clearly constantly exploring and learning and is not afraid to change his perspective on topics. I view his writing as deeply thought provoking but do not assume they are hard facts. (In this book, I have a hard time seeing how Madden’s triplicate forms would be considered an ‘overstory’ rather than a technical reality that impacted the drug epidemic.- Many of Gladwell’s previous books have introduced ideas that were widely adopted (tipping point is just one of them), so I would expect ideas from this book to circulate pretty widely.- This book does not discuss how social media impacts public opinion. It never mentions ‘fake news,’ contemporary politics, or other aspects of modern society (in 2024) that I had expected from the title.Is it for children: The book talks about Medicare fraud, drug abuse, suicide, White Flight and the Holocaust, so there are quite a few heavy topics. I do not recall any profanity or sexual content.Conclusion: Gladwell has put out another fascinating book that spans a wide range of topics and is sure to leave you thinking. It is a quick, engaging read, even as some of the topics are quite heavy.As with Gladwell’s other books, it is sometimes hard to tell if everything seems to be tying together neatly because in fact they do, or if it is Gladwell’s skill as a writer that makes it seem so. Reviewing the notes I wrote on the book, there were aspects that I was not sure fit perfectly, though that may be an indication of the limits of my understanding of the book, rather than a flaw in the content.Overall, it is a fun read that is thought provoking. And as noted, because Gladwell is so widely read, it seems likely that elements of this book will become widely known and shared. Interestingly, he touches on some ideas from The Tipping Point but almost never references them directly or even acknowledges which ideas he discussed in his earlier book.
Kal –
Amazing insights into âtipping pointâ stories showcasing negative, even disastrous, events. Well researched! Great variety! Superb!
Joachim O. –
The book presents interesting factors that facilitate epidemics and the three main ones the author concentrates on are âoverstoriesâ, âsuperspreadersâ and âthe right proportionsâ. Covid is not the central story in this book but rather one of several examples which in this case would be the fact that very few superspreaders caused disproportionate high infection rates. Another one would the be origins of the opioid crises in certain US states and that the seeds for this crisis (or the fact that some states were not as badly affected as others) had been already sown 1939. The reader will also learn about the darker motives behind the fact that it is easier for elite junior athletes to be admitted to Ivy League colleges.Overall, a very interesting book which makes you look at events from a different angle.
Maria –
Witty, interesting, educative and emotional – another book of Malcolm Gladwel I truly enjoyed reading.
Amazon Customer –
Social engineering/manipulation is extremely power and wether we like it or not, these techniques are used on us.As citizens of modern society we need the knowledge to help us fence off deliberately social engineering and manipulation.This book is a great place to start gaining that knowledge
B.Sudhakar Shenoy –
The Oxford dictionary describes the word epidemic as âa sudden, widespread occurrence of a particular undesirable phenomenon.â Epidemics are initially not visible, and often ignored, till the point they âTipâ. The most recent one that held the world hostage for a couple of years, killing millions is the COVID crisis.But what if epidemics follow some rules, and act within certain geographical boundaries. Our understanding of these ârulesâ gives us enormous ability to predict, contain and even prevent epidemics through tools of social engineering. This book is yet another splendid work from Malcolm Gladwell, who has the unique ability to see things in a completely different perspective that makes his writing so insightful, engaging and thought provoking.Gladwell brings in the concept of âoverstoryâ, similar to that which can be observed over forests, that is unique to each forest and that which fosters and supports different forms of life and an ecosystem beneath it. Overstories in societies are the distinctive social norms, ethnicity, legal frameworks and traditions that maintain, support and nourish certain behaviors, within its clearly distinguishable boundaries. In the United States, Illinois and Indiana are neighbors. They have very similar poverty rates, unemployment levels and income figures. Yet, Indiana has TWICE the problem of drug abuse than Illinois measured in âprescribed morphine milligram equivalents. Data in 2019 says that the figure in Indiana was 756.6, while Illinois stood at 366, less than 50 percent of its neighbor. Similar variations apply to the entire country, with some states that have double the opioid overdose rate than the rest.The story or overstory to be precise, is attributed to a man largely lost to history, Paul E. Madden who was appointed director of the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement in 1939. Described as âimperious, ponderous and puritanicalâ, Madden was a warrior against drug abuse. Thanks to his dedication, focus and political clout, he was successful in getting a law passed in California in 1939 ( Bill No 2606), wherein every doctor who writes a prescription for an opioid is mandated to use a special prescription pad supplied by the Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement with distinctive serial numbers. The form was in TRIPLICATE, with one copy for the pharmacy, one copy for the Bureau and the third that had to be preserved for two years. This system, adopted subsequently by all states put all doctors under a scanner, with full data at disposal of the authorities. Fifty years later, thanks to the lobby led by Purdue Pharmaceuticals for its drug Oxycontin which was deliberately misrepresented as safe and not habit forming, and the removal of triplicate laws in some states, was the change in the overstory. Non triplicate states led to the spread of opioid misuse, overdose and deaths. The difference in drug abuse rates is clearly between âtriplicateâ and ânon triplicateâ states. In other words, states with a very different overstory â Madden states vs the rest.It is also interesting to note that just 1 percent of the doctors prescribe over 80 percent of the opioids. Similar is the case of vehicular pollution where 5 percent of the vehicles create two thirds of the pollution, and less that 1 percent of âsuperspreadersâ are responsible for transmitting the infection to over 80 per cent of the infected people. The Law of the Few is the second insight which is startling.The third insight is about the Proportions. Up to one fourth it doesnât seem to matter, when in a largely white dominated neighborhoods, blacks and other colored ethnicity move in. But when it reaches a third, suddenly the âwhite flightâ begins and in a very short time the neighborhood is fully non white. This explains why at Harvard, though the university may not admit, admissions and based in addition to merit, through the second track known as ALDC â that is Athletes, Legacies (children of Alumni), Deanâs interest list (children of rich people who contribute generously to the endowment) and children of Faculty. This âformulaâ has ensured that the university maintains a steady White and similar ethnicity which is always above 50 percent, while every other ethnicity (African American, Hispanic, Asian etc) is at best 20 percent or below. Only one ethnicity is always above âThe Magic Thirdâ.The book finally summaries these three core principles of âOverstories, Super spreaders and Group Proportionsâ in a way that we can use these principles if we may call them, for prudent social engineering, to prevent conflict and epidemics, and use them to build a better world.The book appears a little vague in the first two chapters, unlike his previous books, where the excitement starts at the first paragraph itself. However, the subsequent chapters unveil the story with an overstory that compelling and examples that are engrossing and his style that is inimitable and spellbinding.Gladwellâs books are highly addictive, a positive one for sure.