Revenge of the tipping point

by Malcolm Gladwell

Twenty-five years after the publication of his groundbreaking first book, Malcolm Gladwell returns with a brand new volume that reframes the lessons of The Tipping Point in a startling and revealing light'If the world can be moved by just the slightest push, then the person who knows where and when to push has real power. So who are those people? What are their intentions? What techniques are they using?'

Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world's most successful bank robbers, rediscovers a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visits the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis.

Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell's most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of the modern world. It's time to revisit social epidemics, and it's time we took their tipping points seriously.

'Addictive... fascinating and provocative' Guardian
'Malcolm Gladwell explores the watershed moments that define this new age of societal upheaval... with curiosity and humor' TIME Magazine
'Gladwell is a great storyteller with a contagious sense of curiosity' The Economist
'The match that so elegantly graced the cover of The Tipping Point is now on fire' Wall Street Journal

Genres: Nonfiction

368 pages, Paperback

Published September 4, 2025

About the author

Malcolm Timothy Gladwell is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He has published seven books. He is also the host of the podcast Revisionist History and co-founder of the podcast company Pushkin Industries.
Gladwell's writings often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences, such as sociology and psychology, and make frequent and extended use of academic work. Gladwell was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2011.

Reviews

[Sarah Stanfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fair warning, this book is very dark… not a great uplifting read around the holidays. I had to skip the COVID chapter because it brought up too many scars. Otherwise, fascinating as always, although it felt like there were more stories where he was trying to get me to connect the dots and I was missing the connection. As a revisionist history fan I anticipated some great insight and analysis, but I missed a lot of a ha moments I think? Reads fast. Learned a lot.

[Nuno Pereira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful reading that reshapes the way we see society and how things spread. The book focus on overstories, superspreaders, and group proportions – the drivers for reaching the tipping point. Lastly, it makes us think about social engineering and how we are more manipulated than we think.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting for sure. But, not his best.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this. Interwoven, seemingly unrelated stories make up the building blocks for an answer to a question I didn't think could be answered.

I'm impressed. This was 5 stars for me.