[inaudible conversations] good evening and welcome those newcomers and repeat offenders. If you look around you notice in impenetrable books are out there in the world. That being the case it is always refreshing to find one whose impact with the proportion to the length and have to and the Tipping Point is one of those books with from time to time a work appears that acts as a decongestant for the brain , one strong spray and the intellectual passages clear up even if they were blocked in the first place. Now we can grasp the things around us were always looking at and the effect on the reader can be rather intoxicating. Once again it is that kind of book to ask the kinds of questions a child might ask on the tip of the tongue the name on the brain and we find it hard to focus on not despite the obviousness why didnt anybody think of this before . And then what makes things catch on and take off and ideas and products fads and trends in fashion cultural phenomenon and you may find the
Book blink the power of thinking without thinking which looks at how people make splitsecond decisions. Hello . If everyone can hear me my name is henry center, editorial director of the new yorker magazine i would like to welcome to you to the fifth annual new yorker festival. The message here to say please turn off any cell phones or pager devices. Malcolm will be speaking for about 40 minutes, we will have 20 to 30 minutes of q a after that. During the question period there will be microphones down the aisle and we request that you would speak into the microphone during that time. Malcolm gladwell has been a staff writer for the new yorker magazine since 1996, before that he was a new york bureau chief for the washington post. At the new yorker he very quickly made his mark establishing a new genre of story, the Malcolm Gladwell story. Theres very few people like that in the 80 years of this magazine stop editorial meetings the subjects abcome up and say thats been done to that. Som