Malcolm Gladwell's highly imaginative pop treatise on the flow of goods and ideas in society reached a tipping point of its own, spending many weeks on the New York Times best-seller list , and then appearing for weeks on both lists following its paperback publication.Proposing a contagion model, in which things spread through the population like viruses, Gladwell examines a range of phenomena--the sudden and unexpected popularity of Hush Puppies in the fashion world, the decline in the crime rate in New York City, how a book (THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD) became a bestseller out of the blue, a spike in youth suicide rates in Malaysia--teasing out the cause and logic, and showing how they all had a tipping point and how they illustrate one of three basic principles. He cites sometimes arcanely sourced studies to support his theories, and along the way has popularized terms such as word-of-mouth marketing and stickiness. THE TIPPING POINT has changed the way we look at and talk about stuff, and Gladwell's ideas have energized fields such as business, marketing, education, and sociology.