Notes from August's Nonfiction Book Discussion

At last week's discussion of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell, we talked about Gladwell's engaging style and eclectic use of examples, we questioned how convincing his theory really is, we considered the political and ethical implications of what some critics have said is a potential for social engineering latent in Gladwell's ideas, and we connected his ideas to several recent news stories.

We enjoyed Gladwell's ability to draw the reader into a discussion of a potentially abstract concept, for example The Power of Context, or how our environment influences our behavior in any given situation, by illustrating it with stories about Bernie Goetz and New York City's attempt to fight high crime rates, children's honesty in test-taking situations, seminarians' willingness to help an injured person when late for a meeting, the popularity of Rebecca Wells' Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood with reading groups, the spread of Methodism in the 1780s, the relationship of brain size to social group size, and the corporate structure of Gore Associates, makers of the fabric Gore-Tex. Yet we agreed with several reviewers who felt that Gladwell's book does not adequately integrate all of his wonderful anecdotes into a unified narrative. To some readers, his book feels like a collection of his New Yorker articles pieced together.

We also agreed that Gladwell's theory, like his style, felt pieced together. Most of his examples nicely illustrate one of his Three Rules of Epidemics, but few of his examples clearly show all rules working together. We decided that aspects of his theory provide new ways of looking at social interactions and social epidemics, but that these aspects do not add up to a comprehensive explanation of all social interactions and social epidemics. Those of us who had read Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking agreed that it provided a more unified read than The Tipping Point in both style and content.

In an interview with Gladwell at http://www.gladwell.com/, he says, "One of the things I'd like to do is to show people how to start 'positive' epidemics of their own." Some critics have suggested that Gladwell's prescriptive purpose in this book has a tinge of social engineering about it. However, we felt that his motives were more benign than that term implies. As he says in the conclusion of the book, "In the end, Tipping Points are a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action." We agreed that it is up to each individual to apply the information in the book ethically.

One of Gladwell's points in discussing The Power of Context is that our environment influences us far more than we realize. We noted that two recent news stories illustrate his point. In one story, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that obesity spreads in social networks. The other story, from The New York Times, is that psychologists have discovered that our subconscious brains are far more active and independent than we realized and that our subconscious goals can be primed, or manipulated, without our awareness. These stories confirm that knowledge of how social epidemics work and the desire to work with them for a positive goal is essential. Gladwell's book offers this knowledge to a broad readership.

We welcome your comments to our discussion!

For next month's discussion, to be held Tuesday, September 4, at 7:00 p.m. in Meeting Room B at Main Library, we will read The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. We hope you will join us!