[#5] Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
โ๐ Join our book club community on WhatsApp
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โWe will be reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Revenge of the Tipping Point
โ๐๐You can also listen to these two interviews with the author, these are like 1 hour long and will be good enough to prepare for the discussion.
โWe are meeting at Manny's in Mission. Prompts for discussion will be shared before the meeting. Looking forward to a thought-provoking and engaging discussion!
โBlurb:
โIn this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns after 25 years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time focusing on their dark side. Through a series of riveting stories, he traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering.
โGladwell takes readers from the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world's most successful bank robbers, to a forgotten 1970s TV show that changed the world, to a historic experiment in a California cul-de-sac. He also offers an alternate history of the COVID pandemic and opioid crisis.
โWhere the book truly shines is in its exploration of deliberate attempts to shape group behavior, like how Harvard uses sports teams to maintain demographic ratios, or how triplicate prescription forms impacted the opioid epidemic. These case studies highlight the power and peril of manipulating social dynamics.
โThroughout, Gladwell grapples with thorny ethical questions around engineering social outcomes. He doesn't offer easy answers, but provides a framework for thinking through these complex issues. Combining his signature storytelling with social science, Gladwell offers a thought-provoking guide to making sense of the contagions shaping our modern world.