The biography of an idea: that many of the problems we face - from teenage delinquency to traffic jams - behave like epidemics and are capable of sudden and dramatic change due to their inherent volatility. The author explores the ramifications of this, offering a way to view the world.

The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and the idea is quite simple: that many of the problems we face - from murder to teenage delinquency to traffic jams - behave like epidemics. They aren't linear phenomena in the sense that they steadily and predictably change according to the level of effort brought to bear against them. They are capable of sudden and dramatic changes in direction. Years of well-intentioned intervention may have no impact at all, yet the right intervention - at just the right time - can start a cascade of change.;Many of the social ills that face us today, in other words, are as inherently volatile as the epidemics that periodically sweep through the human population: little things can cause them to tip at any time and if we want to understand how to confront and solve them we have to understand what those tipping points are. In this study, Malcolm Gladwell explores the ramifications of this. Not simply for politicians and policy-makers, his method provides a way of viewing everyday experience and seeking to enable us to develop strategies for everything from raising a child to running a company.

A wonderfully entertaining debut novel that purports to be the memoirs of a female centenarian born on January 1, 1900 - and her life story takes in the tranquillity of England at the start of the century, Paris in the exciting 1920s, London in the depressed Thirties and the New York Arts scene of the 1960s. All is revealed as the story unfolds and the author's startling secret comes to light in a genuine tour de force.