I read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference during a vacation to the family homestead last week. All ya'll probably read it years ago, but I'm slow like that. Even when the Mickster strongly recommends something, it takes me two years to follow up.

I found the book positively mindblowing (my mind is easily blown, so don't get pissy with me if you thought it was simplistic and obvious). I've got no idea if everything in it was correct; I'm way too lazy and easily distracted to actually try and track down the references, and much of the book was anecdotal. But the ideas were both counter-intuitive and compellingly sensible. The broken windows theory of crime prevention; why we remember who Paul Revere is, but have forgotten his compatriot who rode the other way; how to stop the smoking epidemic (of great interest to me, as a soon-to-be-non-smoker); why children who watched Sesame Street consistently are more likely to be readers as adults. Oh, yea, and Peter Jennings is a Republican. If a book can convince me of that, it's a tight piece of propaganda.

How 'bout that, I just now found Gladwell's webpage. I highly recommend his most recent New Yorker article, The Naked Face.