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

This book is part of a journey that says much about our times. To understand it, it helps to quote from a different book. “Look at the world around you,” the different book begins. “It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push – in just the right place – it can be tipped.” This different book does tip things. In fact, it changes everything. At least it did for Malcolm Gladwell. The Tipping Point was his first best-seller and the foundation of his unexpected media empire. Based on a particular type of storytelling, in which one specific event or person is extrapolated into something world-shaking, Tipping Point spawned a genre – call it TED Talk non-fiction. Revenge of the Tipping Point revisits this using an even more infuriatingly oblique storytelling style that constantly conceals which story he’s telling and stacks one within the other, Arabian Nights-style. Honestly, it’s exhausting.