Analysis Of The Tipping Point By Malcolm Gladwell

A journalist, and a magazine writer, Malcolm Gladwell is the author of The Tipping Point. Appealing to the common people is the main purpose of Gladwell’s book as it leads to the rapid increase in its popularity. He believes that little things create change, something that can be seen as common sense. Although Gladwell is able to gather a large number of readers and followers, he is unable to reach to people other than the common people. Gladwell is successful in manipulating the readers by playing with their emotions and by providing an immense amount of examples; he lacks credibility and attempts to use numbers to prove his point.

Although Gladwell has been a magazine writer for a long period of time, he is not credible. Malcolm Gladwell

As a reporter at Washington Post, he covered science and business and was also the newspaper’s bureau chief. Gladwell won a National Magazine award in 1999 and was proclaimed one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2005. Despite of all this, Gladwell does not possess the credibility he requires. Yes, Gladwell did work for The New Yorker, but despite of it being a completely credible source, it is a newspaper and that requires a spinning of some truth. This makes Gladwell lose a part of his credibility. As a magazine writer, Gladwell has the skills to be persuasive and rapidly captures the interest of the readers. In spite of having a History major, Gladwell is seen as continuously creating broad generalizations rather than being specific. He implies that it was Paul Revere’s Midnight Run that caused the American Revolution “and from that exchange came the war known as the American Revolution”, when it was actually other factors such as the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party that played greater roles (Gladwell 31). Pinker says “The problem with Gladwell’s generalizations about prediction is that he never zeroes in on the essence of a statistical problem and instead interprets

Not everyone knows about the history of the Revolutionary War and using this to his leverage when he stresses Paul Revere and his midnight ride. Inclined to leave the main facts behind to emphasize his meaning, he overlooks the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party along with other key figures. By essentially being the connector, Gladwell manages to find a connection among many people, further peaking their interest in his novel. His usage of numbers and statistics allows him to temporarily convince the well educated reader “between June 1955 and july 1958, 81 infants in the Swedish barrack came down with PCP and 24 died.” (Gladwell 23). Each and every number mentioned pulls the reader into the trap. After an attempt to prove his thesis, Gladwell does not succeed and winds up repeating a majority of his ideas. Hush Puppies, Paul Revere and tragedies are repeated continuously throughout the whole book. Gladwell also brings up his friends on multiple occasions to provide “support” for his ideas. While he fools many into believing his ideas are groundbreaking and one of a kind, they are merely common sense. Ultimately he convinces his readers that he is correct and that there are no flaws with an exception of some who comprehend that it does not take a genius, as Gladwell often portrays himself to be, to write down what is common