"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject. For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanize the forces of resistance so effectively in part because he was what Gladwell calls a "Connector": he knew just about everybody, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each of the towns that he rode through. But Revere "wasn't just the man with the biggest Rolodex in colonial Boston," he was also a "Maven" who gathered extensive information about the British. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly whom to tell. The phenomenon continues to this day--think of how often you've received information in an e-mail message that had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching you. Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as the "stickiness" of ideas or the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple, clear explanations and entertainingly illustrative anecdotes, such as comparing the pedagogical methods of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, or explaining why it would be even easier to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the actor Rod Steiger. Although some readers may find the transitional passages between chapters hold their hands a little too tightly, and Gladwell's closing invocation of the possibilities of social engineering sketchy, even chilling, The Tipping Point is one of the most effective books on science for a general audience in ages. It seems inevitable that "tipping point," like "future shock" or "chaos theory," will soon become one of those ideas that everybody knows--or at least knows by name. --Ron Hogan, Amazon.com

大部分日常社交谈话总包含着谣传。日常生活中我们与朋友聊天时，也充斥着各种有根据或无根据的小道消息。 这种社交谈话只是向我们的对话者表达一种含糊的友好感觉，避免沉默的尴尬，它们只是谣言传播的一种形式。 谣言的散布一直是重大的社会和心理问题，在危机时刻更是如此，每当社会局势紧张，不实的报道便恶毒地增长。 在大多数事情上，我们都是非专业的，谣言就因此而产生。我们没有时间，也没有耐心去检验我们所听到的是否背离证据的外在标准，即使有时这些标准存在，也能得到。所以我们抵御谣言惟一可靠的方法就是对所有道听途说的描述持普遍怀疑的态度。希望读者通过对本书的阅读能形成谨慎的怀疑态度。