This is the eighth book by the ex-pat Canadian social commentator living in New York, who takes great delight in pointing out the counterintuitive.
Starting and finishing the text he cites the testimony of the now defunct Sacklers in relation to the opioid crisis in the U.S. and does make some counterintuitive points. In between he discusses the apparent tipping point of having a Magic Third of women on corporate boards, the descent of Miami into the capital of Medicare fraud, the problematic recruitment of athletes to Harvard and Georgetown, the homogeneity of Poplar Grove leading to an epidemic of suicides, the superspreaders of Covid, and a variety of other societal problems.
I found some of the associations that he asserts to be tipping points to be contrived, highly speculative and of dubious importance.
Several charts within the text and almost every one of the 29 pages of endnotes are superimposed on the text making it almost impossible to read them clearly, in the ebook version at least. This is obviously the fault of the layout team and not the author.
At one point he seems to claim that Fort Erie, Ontario is larger than nearby Buffalo, when in fact it is about 1/10 the size.
Although I learned a fair bit from reading this book, it is not nearly as good as the original The Tipping Point.
3.5/5
Thanks, Book Bub
The Passionate Reader 