Gladwell has his own website with interviews related to each of his books.
If you're interested in Gladwell's perspective on psychology and his thoughts on being invited to the APA (American Psychological Association) convention in Boston this year, check out this easy read. It's kinda funny, he's a funny guy.
Gladwell is on the staff of the New Yorker, previously with the Washington Post. Here he is asked about social change (9 minutes).
Okay, so below (in Bold) I have integrated what we said by listing "key ideas" from each book which stuck with us after reading one. I added some info from his website and videos related to each of the books, too.
What is The Tipping Point about?http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/index.html
It's a book about change. In particular, it's a book that presents a new way of understanding why change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does. For example, why did crime drop so dramatically in New York City in the mid-1990's? How does a novel written by an unknown author end up as national bestseller? Why do teens smoke in greater and greater numbers, when every single person in the country knows that cigarettes kill? Why is word-of-mouth so powerful? What makes TV shows like Sesame Street so good at teaching kids how to read? I think the answer to all those questions is the same. It's that ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics. The Tipping Point is an examination of the social epidemics that surround us.
1. The Tipping Point is that magic moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. At what point does it become obvious that something has reached a boiling point and is about to tip?
2. The possibility of sudden change is at the center of the idea of the Tipping Point -- big changes occurring as a result of small events. If we agree that we are all, at heart, gradualists, our expectations set by the steady passage of time, is it reassuring to think that we can predict radical change by pinning their tipping points? Can we really ensure that the unexpected becomes the expected?
There is a point when the community "tips." The magic number seems to be 150 and we could see that on FaceBook, in schools, at work, and now that I think of it, probably right down to holiday cards. Once the number of people goes beyond 150, we lose connection and ability to be involved in each other's lives. One hundred and fifty people is the maximum company number so that you can know everyone, so some businesses only build 150 parking spaces, and when cars start parking on the grass, they open a new company!
When the racial minority becomes the majority - 5 minute YouTube clip
There are people who have the following roles: Mavin, Salesman, and Connector. We thought that every organization, town, and business might have folks in this role, though MG talks about much larger systems. For example, we can think of folks who are on several committees in town and therefore able to be "connectors" in their own circle.
The Law of the Few is shown in this comedy sketch (actually pretty good) - 5 minute comedy clip
Here's a comedy about those roles - 5 minute sketch
What is Blink about?http://www.gladwell.com/blink/index.html
It's a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, "Blink" is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.
You could also say that it's a book about intuition, except that I don't like that word. In fact it never appears in "Blink." Intuition strikes me as a concept we use to describe emotional reactions, gut feelings--thoughts and impressions that don't seem entirely rational. But I think that what goes on in that first two seconds is perfectly rational. It's thinking--its just thinking that moves a little faster and operates a little more mysteriously than the kind of deliberate, conscious decision-making that we usually associate with "thinking." In "Blink" I'm trying to understand those two seconds. What is going on inside our heads when we engage in rapid cognition? When are snap judgments good and when are they not? What kinds of things can we do to make our powers of rapid cognition better?
The power of thinking without thinking.In this video, Gladwell is supposed to talk about Blink, but ends up talking about what we can learn from Howard Moskowitz - someone who reinvented Pepsi and then Prego (17 mins). Theme - "By embracing diversity, of human beings, you will find a surer way to true happiness."
What is an Outlier?http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html
"This is not a book about tall trees, it's a book about forests," that is, what was around the individual (what nourished the person) to be successful beyond their basic biology.
"Because we personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung, make rules that frustrate achievement, prematurely write off people as failures, too much in awe of those who succeed, too dismissive of those who fail, and become to passive - overlook the role society plays in who makes it and who doesn't (acknowledge that cut off dates matter!)"
"Successful people don't work harder, they work much, much harder" - practice, practice and practice about 3 hours a day or 20 hours a week - the difference between someone who becomes a professional musician and one who becomes a teacher. "Practice isn't the thing you do when you are good, it is the things that makes you good." You can usually not do this by yourself when you are a child/young adult - you need parents to push you, someone to pay for you (because you can't work), a special program like an "elite" team, an extraordinary opportunity, in essence, a chance to put in those necessary hours.
"Success wasn't of their own making, it was also a product of the society within their lives" (and the "window" which is open during that time). What your parents (and their parents) did for work also matters.
The "culture of honor" says that it matters where you are from, not just you, but also your ancestors (grand parents and great grand parents) and from exactly where in the world. Culture "persists generation after generation, virtually in tact, even though the economic, social, and demographic conditions which spawned them have vanished. They play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of the world without them."
The culture you come from affects how you communicate and has been found to be the cause of airplane accidents when pilot and ground control do not have the same cultural communication style - there's no nonverbal communication, it's person to person, you can't have the pilots arguing in Korean about what was said in English (the language of aviation) by the ground control. "Transmitter-oriented" - It is the responsibility of the SPEAKER to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously. "Receiver-oriented"- It is the responsibility of the LISTENER to make sense of what is being said. Korea has six levels of address depending on the relationship between the two people (formal deference, informal deference, blunt, familiar, intimate, plain). A social superior is given deference. All social behavior and actions are conducted in the order of seniority or ranking. If pilots are deferring to each other, and using receiver-oriented communication, they don't "speak up" when they know there is a problem, and the plane crashes. Korean air was revamped by requiring English be spoke by pilots and eliminating ranking (so everyone was equally responsible).
Poor kids outlearn wealthiest kids 191 to 186 points on the CAT (California Achievement Tests). When you just look at how reading scores change during summer vacation after first grade, wealthy kids' reading scores have increased by 15 points, but poor kids have dropped by almost 4 points. Poor kids may outlearn rich kids during the school year, but during the summer, they fall behind. If you look at the culmulative effect of summer vacation from grades 1 to 5, poor kids learn nothing when school is not in session (up only .26 points), but the rich kids' reading scores go up by 52 points. Poor kids don't get the same culture (camp, books, museums, parents managing behavior, etc.) at home. If schools were year round the gains would be the same.
Our cultural legacy is part of who we are and are a huge part of the experiences we have had and will have. Gladwell debunks "rugged individualism." "Outliers" aren't really "outliers" at all. They have had a lot of privileges, advantages, access, and resources that others didn't. We don't achieve without the help of others and are products of times, places, and environments (culture). You need to be given the opportunity to work hard (it doesn't matter how fine a gymnast you are, you won't reach world class unless a world class gymnast opens a gym near where you live and you have the transportation and time to get there).
"Outlier" is a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience. In the summer, in Paris, we expect most days to be somewhere between warm and very hot. But imagine if you had a day in the middle of August where the temperature fell below freezing. That day would be outlier. And while we have a very good understanding of why summer days in Paris are warm or hot, we know a good deal less about why a summer day in Paris might be freezing cold. In this book I'm interested in people who are outliers—in men and women who, for one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August.
It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert (about 10 years) - People need to allow enough time to reach mastery and not be so hard on "beginners" - 5 minutes speech here.
We've heard that it takes 1000 paintings to say you're an artist.
This makes sense to us.
