The acclaimed popular science writer follows up his highly influential study of social contagion

Certain creative works possess such powerful self-referentiality, an endless ability to ricochet, that they become embedded in the culture. One such book is Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. Published more than two decades ago, it explored a dazzling range of topics, from crime rates in New York to shoe sales, all through the lens of epidemiology. “[T]he best way to understand […] any number of mysterious changes that mark everyday life,” he wrote, “is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviours spread just like viruses do.” An international bestseller, it became a kind of testament to its own thesis, a viral work about viral phenomena.

I can still recall reading The Tipping Point as a teenager and being bowled over by its seductive marriage of social science and psychology to New Yorker-style portraits and anecdotes. Like an indiscreet magician, Gladwell presented his readers with a series of stories, mysteries and puzzles, and then proceeded to decode them, revealing his workings in an upbeat and confident narrative voice. Listen to me, he seemed to whisper to his readers, and I will show you the hidden workings of society, and how you, as an individual, can influence or “tip” the trends that shape it. The book turned its 36-year-old author into a household name, a kind of secular seer at the turn of the new millennium.