I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, which is an excellent book
basically about human behaviour. He explains the moment when ideas, trends or social behaviour cross a threshold, tip and spread like wildfire. Includes the example of the New York Subway, and how by simply removing the Graffiti caused a dramatic reduction in serious crime and the very interesting story of Airwalk shoes rise and fall. It basically squashes the idea that big results require big effort, however, the message behind The Tipping Point is that an individual applying a well placed lever can move the world.
There is a great chapter around one of my favourite subjects, smoking.
As well as suggesting that smokers spend more on coffee and liqour and have a higher sex drive it goes on to say
“Smokers rank much higher on what psychologists call ‘anti-social’ indexes, they tend to have greater levels of misconduct, and be more rebellious and defiant….One theory has it that their lack of deference and their surfeit of defiance combine to make them reletively indifferent to what people think of them”

Well worth a read.
ISBN 0-316-64852-3

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 at 10:29 and is filed under smoking, Books, social comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.