Chapter Content
Okay, so, um, I guess I should start by saying that a while back, like, twenty-five years ago, I published my first book. It was called "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference." Yeah, kind of a mouthful, right?
Anyway, back then, I had this little, you know, apartment in Chelsea, Manhattan, and I'd basically just sit there at my desk, you could kinda see the Hudson River way off in the distance, and I'd just, like, write in the mornings before I went to work. I mean, I had no idea what I was doing. I'd never written a book before, so, you know, it was that classic mix of self-doubt and... euphoria, I guess, that all first-time authors have.
I started the book, and I literally wrote, "The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea," and the idea was, I thought, very simple. It's that the best way to understand, like, fashion trends, or crime waves, or how unknown books become bestsellers, or why teenagers start smoking, or even just word of mouth, you know, all those mysterious changes in everyday life is to see them as epidemics. Like, ideas and products and messages and behaviors, they spread like viruses, right?
The book came out in the spring, and my first book tour stop was this little bookstore in LA. Two people showed up. Seriously. One was a stranger and the other was the mother of a friend, but, like, not even my friend. I’ve forgiven her, by the way. I kinda thought, "Well, that's it, then." But it wasn't! "The Tipping Point" grew like those epidemics I was describing, you know? It started slow, and then it just took off. By the time the paperback came out, it was, like, everywhere. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for years. Bill Clinton even referred to it as "that book everyone's been talking about." And the phrase "tipping point," well, it just became, like, part of everyday language. I used to joke it'd be on my tombstone, which, uh, hopefully isn’t happening any time soon.
Do I actually know *why* "The Tipping Point" resonated with people? Not really. But if I had to guess, I’d say it was because it was kind of a hopeful book, and, well, it matched the mood of a hopeful time. The year 2000, I mean, it was optimistic. The new millennium had arrived! Crime was down, social problems were decreasing. The Cold War was over. And I, you know, I offered a recipe for positive change, like, how little things can actually make a big difference.
Twenty-five years... it’s a long time, right? Think about how different you are *now* than you were twenty-five years ago. Our opinions change. Our tastes change. We care about some things more, some things less. Over the years, I'd look back at "The Tipping Point" and wonder, like, how I ever wrote some of that stuff. A whole chapter on Sesame Street and Blue's Clues? Where did that come from? I didn't even have kids back then.
I moved on, you know? I wrote "Blink," "Outliers," "David and Goliath," "Talking to Strangers," and "The Bomber Mafia." I started the podcast "Revisionist History." I, uh, settled down with the woman I love. I had two kids and, uh, buried my father and took up running again and cut my hair. I sold that Chelsea apartment. I moved out of the city. A friend and I started an audio company called Pushkin Industries. I even got a cat and named him Biggie Smalls. Yeah, I know.
You know that feeling when you see a picture of yourself from, like, ages ago? It's kinda hard to recognize the person in the photo. And I started thinking about revisiting "The Tipping Point," because of the anniversary, and, like, reexamining what I wrote through totally different eyes. The idea was, you know, "The Tipping Point 2.0," where I would return to the scene of my first, youthful success.
But then, as I dove back into the world of social epidemics, I realized I didn't want to just cover the same ground. The world felt different to me now. In "The Tipping Point," I talked about principles that helped us understand sudden shifts in behavior, you know, those things that shape our world. And I still think those ideas are useful. But now, well, I have different questions. And, honestly, I still don't understand a lot about social epidemics.
I hadn't reread "The Tipping Point" in years, and when I finally did, to get ready for this project, I kept stopping every few pages and asking myself, like, "What about this? How could I have left that out?" Deep down, I realized I'd never stopped arguing with myself about how to *best* explain and understand tipping points.
So, I started again. Fresh sheet of paper. And, well, the result is "Revenge of the Tipping Point." It's a whole new set of theories, stories, and arguments about the strange paths that ideas and behaviors take through our world.