Summary Writing

The author of The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, discusses the issues of epidemics and the tipping point. In the introduction, Gladwell starts by giving us an example of how quickly a fashion trend can "tip." He talks about the Hush Puppies Tipping Point in New York. The Hush Puppies were going out of style and the sales were down. A few people in New York were wearing the shoes and more and more people started to wear the shoes. Within a period of one year, Hush Puppies were being sold in malls and stores all over. Another point Gladwell raises is about the crime rates in New York City. He speaks of the specific towns of Brownsville and East New York. The crime rates were "tipping." The crimes had fallen "by about half" within five years.
Gladwell given the definition of the Tipping Point as, "The name given to that one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once is the Tipping Point." (Gladwell 9) In chapter one, Gladwell discusses the epidemic of syphilis in Baltimore. He goes on to talk about how there were three contributors of how the epidemic got started. Also, in this chapter, Gladwell talks about "the three rules of epidemics." The three rules are the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context.
Gladwell concludes the introduction and chapter one by asking questions to keep us wondering what will come next and to make us think about what we just read. One question he ended chapter one with was, "How do these three rules help us understand teenage smoking, for example, or the phenomenon of word of mouth, or crime, or the rise of a bestseller?" (Gladwell 29)