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The Tipping Point
- How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 3 hrs and 4 mins
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Publisher's Summary
In this brilliant and groundbreaking book, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell looks at why major changes in our society so often happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Ideas, behavior, messages, and products, he argues, often spread like outbreaks of infectious disease. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a few fare-beaters and graffiti artists fuel a subway crime wave, or a satisfied customer fill the empty tables of a new restaurant. These are social epidemics, and the moment when they take off, when they reach their critical mass, is the Tipping Point.
In The Tipping Point, Gladwell introduces us to the particular personality types who are natural pollinators of new ideas and trends, the people who create the phenomenon of word of mouth. He analyzes fashion trends, smoking, children's television, direct mail, and the early days of the American Revolution for clues about making ideas infectious, and visits a religious commune, a successful high-tech company, and one of the world's greatest salesmen to show how to start and sustain social epidemics.
The Tipping Point is an intellectual adventure story written with an infectious enthusiasm for the power and joy of new ideas. Most of all, it is a road map to change, with a profoundly hopeful message, that one imaginative person applying a well-placed lever can move the world.
Critic Reviews
"A fascinating book that makes you see the world in a different way." (Fortune)
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What listeners say about The Tipping Point
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Z
- 08-10-05
An interesting listen
I really enjoyed this audio book. I've heard Malcolm Gladwell speak before and had been interested to "read" The Tipping Point for a while. It's a mixture of anectdotes, psychology, economics, marketing, epidemiology and more.
The principle focus of The Tipping Point is how small changes, can bring about large effects. With examples such as marketing of Hush Puppies shoes, the broken windows theory, Airwalk shoes, Paul Reveres midnight ride, word of mouth, mass hysteria and more.
The only disappointing thing about this audio book is that it is abridged. If you like short 3 hour "quick listen"'s, you may not mind, but it felt to me, like a reasonable amount of material was cut out. This was even more apparent at the end during the afterword, when it references several things that did not appear in this audio book.
But overall, it was enjoyable, fairly "light reading", and kept my interest throughout.
35 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Nxp
- 08-22-05
Got it based upon reviews - was not disappointed.
I too found the work well written and well read and fascinating, though I did wonder whether the part that was abridged-out was just as good. Sure wish they had taught this stuff when I went to college 30 years ago. If you're starting your career or if you are thinking about how to run your business, reach your customers or influence your students, you'd be wise to listen. Little things can and do make all the difference sometimes.
I've been an Audible subscriber since 2000 and my original subscription was packaged with a Rio 500 player. I was so impressed with both in the dark days of 2001 that I bought stock in both companies. Audible to its credit acheived the tipping point. But what of Rio? Five years ago my Rio did most of what an IPOD can do today. It still does. Yet Rio was bankrupted twice over while the IPOD made a fortune for Apple and its investors. The IPOD "tipped", while the Rio tanked. Rio didn't get it, but Apple and Audible did. After listening to "The Tipping Point", I understand.
This book and another Audible selection I would recommend - "Linked: The New Science of Networks" (Barabasi) both give an interesting and perhaps essential slant on how things work in our well connected world. Don't set sail on your career without them.
26 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Alfredo
- 09-11-05
Great book, too drastic abridge job
This book is a true classic. I read the text version a while ago and thought i would hear a "refresher". I was hihgly dissapointed that many of the examples and topics covered in the paper version were not even mentioned here.
This book will get you acquianted with the general concepts, but if this stuff really interest you find the nonabridged version or read the paper back.
17 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Jennifer
- 12-21-05
No Audio Purchase, Read it only!
The book is incredible. The audiobook is lousy. The authors voice is great but the abridgment is truly horrible. I wonder if the author deliberately made the abridgement so bad to "tip" people into going and buying his book to fill in the gaps. Hmmmmm....
7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Mr Peterson
- 10-01-05
Disappointing. Overly abridged.
I had high hopes for this book (a breeding ground for disappointment, I realize), but they seemed well-founded. I had heard nothing but good things about it. The subject matter is fascinating and I had already listened to "Blink" (Gladwell's current bestseller), also read by Gladwell, and enjoyed it immensely. What went wrong?
I have to imagine that it suffered from being overly-truncated to fit the 3 hour constraint. To add insult to injury, the actual book itself comprises only approx. 2:20. The remaining 40 minutes are an afterward added (maybe for the paperback release?) that did little to add to/explain the content itself.
I've subsequently borrowed the printed book from the library to fill-in what was missing and hae found it much more elucidating. As it stands, I would only recommend this if you were considering reading the full book and were not sure if you wanted to commit the time to it.
7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Rina A. Stein
- 08-17-05
Awesome!!!
This is an incredible book and narrated by the author whom has a beautiful voice and adds feeling to the words. I was enthrawled.
5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- JessieT
- 08-29-05
Interesting topic, but beautiful voice??
I found the topic and the examples to be mostly quite interesting but having just listened to Freakonomics, I found the latter's analyses more compelling and *definitely* preferred Stephen Dubner's voice. I'm interested to read Blink for content, but a little hesitant for speaking style. Maybe that's one for good ol' print.
4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Richard
- 02-02-06
Clever premise, zero insight
Compared to similar, better researched and more tightly written and argued books like "Freakanomics" or "The Wisdom of Crowds," this book comes off as something that a self-satisfied Ivy League student might write as his thesis paper. There are a lot of interesting ideas and facts, but other than some highly contrived arguments Gladwell half-heartedly tries to work in, there simply isn't much tying them to the central thesis.
In short, the book is just a bunch of disjointed anecdotal examples of "tipping points" which Gladwell tries to buttress with a lot of interesting and tangential information, presumably hoping the reader be entertained enough to fail to notice that he's not actually proving his point in any substantial way. Apparently, he's been very successful at this, but it doesn't change the fact that the "Tipping Point" has plenty to SHOW, but pretty much nothing to SAY.
And the book simply ignores or dismisses in a sentence or two the broad social trends that were going on during specific "epidemics" that were probably as responsible for them as the narrow and inaccurate reasons Gladwell gives. For example, does anyone actually think that if extreme sports hadn't exploded in the 1990's Airwalk would have succeeded through clever advertising? Of course not. Yet Gladwell would have one believe that clever advertising taking advantage of "social innovators" and "mavens" were singlehandedly responsible for Airwalk's success. And "Freakonomics'" explanation for why crime in New York dropped is a LOT more compelling (and statistically disproves) Gladwell's argument that the NYC authorities successfully engineered an "anti-crime epidemic."
On the whole, this is the second glib, insubstantial and overrated book by Gladwell I've listened to, which seems like plenty.
3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Mark Grannis
- 11-01-05
Fascinating insights in a short book
Normally I steer clear of abridgments, but this was an excellent way to spend five hours. I'm not sure how much longer an unabridged version would have been, but I felt the argument of this book proceeded very logically and was adequately developed and supported by the factual examples.
That argument is essentially this: that many social trends and phenomena follow the same basic pattern as epidemics; that they follow the same pattern because they are caused and sustained in much the same way; that the difference between trends that get past the "tipping point" and those that do not may often be one or more very small factors; and that if one wants to create any sort of social trend (whether that be buying a product or committing fewer crimes), it is important to attend to such very small factors.
The book is anecdotal, and for all I know there may be respected social scientists who think Gladwell is a rank amateur who is dabbling beyond his depth. But for my part, I think Gladwell is a perspicacious observer whose insights here are original, interesting, and even useful.
3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Ryan
- 10-01-05
The Power of Numbers!
Wow... What a great read. Malcom Gladwell really captures the spirit of human connections and the human need to feel part of something. A definate must read for anyone interested in looking at what moves people and how a small event can result in large response.
3 people found this helpful
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-
Story
The best-selling author of The Bomber Mafia focuses on "minor geniuses" and idiosyncratic behavior to illuminate the ways all of us organize experience in this "delightful" (Bloomberg News) collection of writings from The New Yorker. What is the difference between choking and panicking? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard-but only one variety of ketchup? What do football players teach us about how to hire teachers? What does hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century?
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Not Gladwell's best - and a recording problem
- By Rudi on 11-26-09
By: Malcolm Gladwell
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Blink
- The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
In his landmark best seller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant, in the blink of an eye, that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept?
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Interesting read with contradictory messages
- By Danny on 04-21-05
By: Malcolm Gladwell
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Outliers
- The Story of Success
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this stunning audiobook, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers" - the best and the brightest, the most famous, and the most successful. He asks the question: What makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: That is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing.
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Engaging, but overrated
- By Scott T. Hards on 12-13-08
By: Malcolm Gladwell
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I Hate the Ivy League
- Riffs and Rants on Elite Education
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Malcolm Gladwell has long relished the opportunity to skewer the upper echelons of higher education, from the institution of U.S. News & World Report’s Best College rankings to the LSATs to the luxe Bowdoin College cafeteria. I Hate the Ivy League: Riffs and Rants on Elite Education, upends the traditional thinking around how education should work and tries to get to the bottom of why we often reward the wrong people.
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repackaged podcasts
- By Bob on 07-15-22
By: Malcolm Gladwell
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David and Goliath
- Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Explore the power of the underdog in Malcolm Gladwell's dazzling examination of success, motivation, and the role of adversity in shaping our lives, from the best-selling author of The Bomber Mafia. Three thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty warrior with nothing more than a stone and a sling, and ever since then the names of David and Goliath have stood for battles between underdogs and giants. David's victory was improbable and miraculous. He shouldn't have won. Or should he have?
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The Art of (Unconventional) War
- By Cynthia on 10-04-13
By: Malcolm Gladwell
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The Tipping Point
- How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Discover Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough debut and explore the science behind viral trends in business, marketing, and human behavior. The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate.
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My tipping point…for audio
- By Mod on 04-17-12
By: Malcolm Gladwell
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What the Dog Saw
- And Other Adventures
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best-selling author of The Bomber Mafia focuses on "minor geniuses" and idiosyncratic behavior to illuminate the ways all of us organize experience in this "delightful" (Bloomberg News) collection of writings from The New Yorker. What is the difference between choking and panicking? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard-but only one variety of ketchup? What do football players teach us about how to hire teachers? What does hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century?
-
-
Not Gladwell's best - and a recording problem
- By Rudi on 11-26-09
By: Malcolm Gladwell
-
Blink
- The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his landmark best seller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant, in the blink of an eye, that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept?
-
-
Interesting read with contradictory messages
- By Danny on 04-21-05
By: Malcolm Gladwell
-
Outliers
- The Story of Success
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this stunning audiobook, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers" - the best and the brightest, the most famous, and the most successful. He asks the question: What makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: That is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing.
-
-
Engaging, but overrated
- By Scott T. Hards on 12-13-08
By: Malcolm Gladwell
-
I Hate the Ivy League
- Riffs and Rants on Elite Education
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Malcolm Gladwell has long relished the opportunity to skewer the upper echelons of higher education, from the institution of U.S. News & World Report’s Best College rankings to the LSATs to the luxe Bowdoin College cafeteria. I Hate the Ivy League: Riffs and Rants on Elite Education, upends the traditional thinking around how education should work and tries to get to the bottom of why we often reward the wrong people.
-
-
repackaged podcasts
- By Bob on 07-15-22
By: Malcolm Gladwell
-
David and Goliath
- Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Explore the power of the underdog in Malcolm Gladwell's dazzling examination of success, motivation, and the role of adversity in shaping our lives, from the best-selling author of The Bomber Mafia. Three thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty warrior with nothing more than a stone and a sling, and ever since then the names of David and Goliath have stood for battles between underdogs and giants. David's victory was improbable and miraculous. He shouldn't have won. Or should he have?
-
-
The Art of (Unconventional) War
- By Cynthia on 10-04-13
By: Malcolm Gladwell
-
The Bomber Mafia
- A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Malcolm Gladwell, author of New York Times best sellers including Talking to Strangers and host of the podcast Revisionist History, uses original interviews, archival footage, and his trademark insight to weave together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in Central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard. As listeners hear these stories unfurl, Gladwell examines one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.
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Listen to the same story on his podcast for free
- By Dustin on 04-28-21
By: Malcolm Gladwell
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Talking to Strangers
- What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true? While tackling these questions, Malcolm Gladwell was not solely writing a book for the page. He was also producing for the ear. In the audiobook version of Talking to Strangers, you’ll hear the voices of people he interviewed - scientists, criminologists, military psychologists.
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Enjoyable listen with some facts incorrect
- By Jim on 09-11-19
By: Malcolm Gladwell
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Endure
- Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance
- By: Alexander Hutchinson, Malcolm Gladwell - foreword
- Narrated by: Robert G. Slade
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Writing from both the cutting edge of scientific discovery and the front-lines of elite athletic performance, National Magazine Award-winning science journalist Alex Hutchinson presents a revolutionary account of the dynamic and controversial new science of endurance.
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Loved the content; narration frustrated me
- By Riverside Fan on 03-01-18
By: Alexander Hutchinson, and others
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Stumbling on Happiness
- By: Daniel Gilbert
- Narrated by: Daniel Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we're so lousy at predicting what will make us happy, and what we can do about it.
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Great Book!
- By TL on 06-09-06
By: Daniel Gilbert
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Miracle and Wonder
- Conversations with Paul Simon
- By: Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam, Paul Simon
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon is part memoir, part investigation, and unlike any creative portrait you’ve ever heard before. Recorded over a series of 30 hours of conversation between Simon, Gladwell, and Gladwell’s oldest friend and co-writer, journalist and Broken Record podcast co-host Bruce Headlam, the conversation flows from Simon’s music, to his childhood in Queens, NY, to his frequent collaborators including Art Garfunkel and the nature of creativity itself.
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A lifelong companion who will never know my name
- By scsurfer on 11-16-21
By: Malcolm Gladwell, and others
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Steve Jobs
- By: Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Dylan Baker
- Length: 25 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
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Good Biography, Fine narrator
- By Chris on 10-27-11
By: Walter Isaacson
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Thinking, Fast and Slow
- By: Daniel Kahneman
- Narrated by: Patrick Egan
- Length: 20 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The guru to the gurus at last shares his knowledge with the rest of us. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman's seminal studies in behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and happiness studies have influenced numerous other authors, including Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman at last offers his own, first book for the general public. It is a lucid and enlightening summary of his life's work. It will change the way you think about thinking. Two systems drive the way we think and make choices, Kahneman explains....
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Difficult Listen, but Probably a Great Read
- By Mike Kircher on 01-12-12
By: Daniel Kahneman
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The 80/20 Principle
- The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less
- By: Richard Koch
- Narrated by: Richard Koch
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Find your "critical 20%" and transform your time - and life - forever! The 80/20 principle - also known as the Pareto principle - is the well-verified observation that in business, economics, and life generally, about 80 percent of all results flow from a mere 20 percent of our efforts. In this thought-provoking and highly informative program, Richard Koch unveils the secrets to how this mysterious but practical principle actually works... how it is affecting your life right now... and how you can start using it to your advantage.
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You only need 20% or less of this book
- By Scrapey on 07-26-18
By: Richard Koch
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The Selfish Gene
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands to rethink their beliefs about life.
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Better than print!
- By J. D. May on 07-31-12
By: Richard Dawkins