At times...the narrative seems unduly slow and discursive, as he shifts, sometimes abruptly, from topic to topic. Still, Gladwell’s update of his ideas about tipping points will probably satisfy hard-core fans, and challenge and divert other readers ... It is not necessary to buy everything Gladwell is selling to appreciate Revenge of the Tipping Point. It turns out that trying to poke holes in his arguments is at least half the fun.
Malcolm Gladwell could have written a fresh book. Instead, he created a brand extension ... A genre bender: self-help without the practical advice, storytelling without the literariness, nonfiction without the vital truths, entertainment without the pleasure, a thriller without actual revelation and a business book without the actionable insights ... He has chosen to be a farm stand that serves salty, fatty, sugary pseudo-thinking. His signature methodology is to convey relatively boilerplate, already well-known ideas, by rebranding the ideas and wrapping them in stories.
Gladwell has changed nothing about his oddly solipsistic approach to crafting social theory ... After 24 years of proudly injecting new ideas into the public discourse, doesn’t Gladwell want to use his ample time, money, talent and stature to evangelize for unambiguously unimpeachable ideas? In other words, doesn’t he want to be interesting and correct? ... The book reads as a clear exercise in crafting social theory rather than mere 'reporting,' which makes the book only as good as Gladwell’s own ideas. And his ideas? They are all built atop an extremely facile metaphor about 'epidemics' that neutralizes nearly everything he wants to say ... Where Gladwell adds new concepts in this book, they mostly overcomplicate obvious principles or offer unnecessary neologisms ... With hundreds of years of scholarship at his disposal, it’s unclear why Gladwell writes within a quarantined-off universe where only his own theories have any validity.
Gladwell is rehashing and rebuilding on the concepts that he first wrote about in 2000. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it wasn’t really necessary either ... Engaging but whiplash-inducing ... The sequel provides more of the same: nuggets of history and jargon that they soak up on airplanes and toss around during conference table conversations.
It might seem too much to expect from an author, even one of Gladwell’s standing, to come up with ways to fix society’s problems. I wouldn’t ask, except that he really does give the impression of having all the answers, and relishes pointing out, over and over, exactly where others have gone wrong ... Was a chance for Gladwell to challenge his own ideas, to dismantle them, even, or to take stock in an age of sweeping new technologies and creeping extremism ... What he gives us instead makes for occasionally interesting reading that appears, on its surface, to be qualified and thorough, but that leaves us very little to chew on.
Gladwell has written a follow-up to his first work that revisits many of its themes. In its self-confidence, addictiveness and lucidity the new book resembles its predecessor, but bears the mark of an older, wizened author ... Many of Gladwell’s subjects are familiar and yet he injects them with a new energy ... For all Gladwell’s academic citations, his objective tone and his repeated references to lessons or laws, this is a book of songs, a skilfully woven fabric made of stories, images and metaphors. I devoured it, just as I did his first, though with more circumspection than my younger self, dwelling on its silences and omissions as much as its artistry.
Odd and occasionally frustrating ... What was once novel and bracing has hardened over the years into a structural cliche, a storytelling tease designed not just to defer intellectual satisfaction, but to suggest a join-the-dots hidden narrative that will eventually cohere into a revelatory unifying theme. That moment never quite arrives.
Contains exactly zero anecdotes about marketing—a remarkable change, given that its predecessor’s success was largely driven by the idea that businesses could use Gladwell’s rules to sell more stuff ... alleable though he may be, Gladwell hasn’t followed us all the way into this new overstory. That’s not really on-brand for him, at least not yet. But maybe he can find some club kids in the East Village to help him catch up.
Gladwell deftly demonstrates how attention to statistics and data points can shape a business, school, or community. An astute and bracing appraisal of how cultures succeed or fail.
