THE TIPPING POINT: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference.

• Author: Noah, Timothy
• Position: Review

THE TIPPING POINT: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference By Malcolm Gladwell Little, Brown, $24.95

IN 1966, ROBERT KENNEDY GAVE THE SPEECH in South Africa that included his now-famous statement about the improbably large changes for the good brought about through individual bravery and idealism. "Each time a man stands up for an ideal," Kennedy said, "or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest wall of oppression and resistance." Not only can, but in the case of South Africa, did, just one generation later.

But how? How were Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, and others able to defeat apartheid? Why have their counterparts in China and North Korea failed to defeat communism? And why have their counterparts in Russia and Eastern Europe been successful in defeating communism? Malcolm Gladwell, the author of this gem of a book, would say that events in South Africa, Russia, and Eastern Europe reached a "tipping point," while events in China and North Korea did not.

Gladwell, a talented staff writer for The New Yorker who began his career writing for conservative publications like The American Spectator, is not the sort of person who's burning to change the world. There is, in fact, nothing in Gladwell's book about turning the tides of history or throwing off the shackles of oppression, and quite a lot about how to devise a successful children's television show or sell a new brand of sneaker. Even when Gladwell writes about emotional issues like teenage suicide, he does so with a detachment that can seem other-worldly. Nonetheless, The Tipping Point could well prove to be an influential text for political activists.

Gladwell's book is built around the theory that ideas, trends, habits, and other kinds of social behavior spread much the same way that infectious diseases do. This idea is not a new one. Richard Dawkins, in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, coined the term "meme" (from the Greek "mimesis," which means "to imitate") to describe the non-biological mechanism by which certain behavioral patterns spread through the human race. What genes do through reproduction, memes do through imitation. Aaron Lynch, in his 1996 book, Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society, elaborated on Dawkins' idea and demonstrated the ways that...