Oh, how I've missed psychological and sociological writing...

I recently read both The Tipping Point and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I've read him in The New Yorker and love his writing style, how conversational and blunt he is. Also, since I've been out of psych school for a while, I haven't read many things that have psychological and/or sociological aspects recently, so the discussions of social "epidemics" (as discussed in The Tipping Point) and success (as discussed in Outliers) were fascinating to me. The points made in both books are sometimes surprising, sometimes more like common sense, once you read them...kind of like "oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense!" He makes his readers really think about society in much more detail than we usually do, and even those things which "suddenly" made sense become much more cognizant. I think that success and the dramatics of quick social change are things that are worth studying, at least to have a better understanding of society and then hopefully the ability to consider one's own life and decisions more carefully, while at the same time not being so quick to judge others. So why does social change happen so quickly, and why are a select few people wildly successful? Read some Malcolm and find out. : )