The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.

GLADWELL, Malcolm.

Item Number: 90368

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2000.

First edition of Gladwell’s debut novel which seeks to explain and describe the “mysterious” sociological changes that mark everyday life. Octavo, original boards. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the title page, “To John ’emotion is contagious!’ M. G.” Fine in a fine dust jacket.

In his debut book, Gladwell defines the tipping point as "that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.” In an effort to explain "mysterious" sociological trends, the book explores such phenomena as the rise in popularity and sales of Hush Puppies shoes in the mid-1990s and the steep drop in New York City's crime rate after 1990. Much of Gladwell's analysis was influenced by the social experiments of psychologist Stanley Milgram including his groundbreaking 1967 small world experiment which examined the the average path length for social networks of people in the United States, or degrees of separation.