"precis"

(In quotes because despite reading a couple of things online about what one of these is, I'm not sure that I've got it right. Also it's missing the accent over the 'e' because I'm too lazy to grab the correct character! And now, without further ado...)

I'm writing on The Tipping Point, because while I enjoyed the writing, I want to be critical about the content. I think it's really easy to write something that's all praise, really easy to write something that's entirely negative, and a lot harder to balance the two and give something an honest review. Not that I'm going to claim to be able to do that, but I'd like to try.

So, The Tipping Point. Particularly the second and fifth chapters, on “The Law of the Few” and the second half of “The Power of Context,” respectively. Both of these chapters have a large focus on people, special people and people in groups, if I’m being specific, but I mostly picked them because they were the two I related to most when reading the book. I think the review will come in four chunks, but that’s just an impression I have before I’ve even starting writing.

The first section is just going to be an introduction, with some quick thoughts about my overall reaction to the book and what it’s about in general. I’m going to try to be really careful to be neutral here, and talk about Gladwell’s relative strengths as a writer. I also hope to very briefly mention the stuff I won't be talking about in detail later on.

The second section I think will be about chapter two, though I may switch this and the section on chapter five after I’ve written them. We'll see. This is the section on Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen, and I'm planning on at least mentioning a few people in my life who I think best fit these categories category. I'm not entirely sure that I feel like actually identifying them, so for anonymity's sake... I think my friends Laura and Peter are Connectors, I think Nate is a Maven, and I'd say Adam is a Salesmen. Each of these people have affected my life in various ways, but past my own life, I see the traits that Gladwell identifies as impacting many of the people around me too. I plan on summarizing Gladwell's main points through talking about each of these people. In this section I also have a few critiques of Gladwell and some of his methods. I guess my issue is that I see these people in my life, after the topic is on my mind because I've been reading about them. Would I otherwise? Most of the chapter is anecdotes about a few people, and while stories are a very nice place to start, I feel that after introducing them, Gladwell generally doesn't switch to hard data, he just makes his conclusions off of his stories. I'm not sure that these three types of people aren't superimportant in causing epidemics, but I feel like I could probably make up a fourth or fifth and get people nodding along with me that these people exist and have an important role in epidemics. I hope in my review to be really clear on the point that I don't disagree with Gladwell, but I also don't tend to assume that we have the whole picture from 7 or 8 datapoints.

Next section on the "Rule of 150." This is something I feel a little safer getting behind. Despite Maxwell's prevalent writing style of story after story, this was something I was familiar with before reading the book, that I've seen in a number of contexts. Personally, it's one of the main topics that came up at an interview I did last year with a University alumni who now works at a data visualization company out in California. it feels less like a cool concept that Gladwell popped some pretty names on and more like an actually verifiable finding with data behind it. Again, I'll do a brief summary of the chapter.

Finally, I want to conclude the review by hopefully drawing some conclusions between the special types of people and their impact on the groups talked about the later chapter. Probably another quick mention of my likes and dislikes of Gladwell if I don't feel like I'm beating a dead horse. Overall, I think I'd recommend the book, because it's a fun read, but only if you've got someone to sit down and think critically through it with you.

The end? I'm not sure how accurate this will end up being, I guess I'm one of those people who usually doesn't do a whole lot of planning and just sort of sits down and lets the words fall onto the page, but it is definitely nice that it's not two days before the whole review is due when I'm sitting down to think about it for the first time at all.