A woolly update of the bestselling 2000 exploration of epidemics struggles to make its point while relying on so-called universal laws and digressive case histories

It’s almost 25 years since Malcolm Gladwell published The Tipping Point, which sought to understand social phenomena – the drop in crime in New York or the sudden popularity of Hush Puppies shoes – from an epidemiological perspective. Its main thesis was that cultural changes don’t take place as a matter of steady gradualism but instead reach a critical mass that opens the flood gates or enables a trend or product to “go viral”.

The book, his first, itself acted like an infectious virus, as it went on to sell millions around the world. It also helped create a new genre, which mixed science and business and popular culture with counterintuitive theories, a formula repeated by books such as Freakonomics and host of other imitators, and one more or less reused by Gladwell himself in a further six bestselling books.