In the acknowl­edg­ments sec­tion of “Revenge of the Tip­ping Point: Over­sto­ries, Super­spread­ers, and the Rise of Social Engi­neer­ing,” the author reflects on the cre­ative process and the wis­dom of econ­o­mist Albert O. Hirschman. Hirschman describes the nature of cre­ativ­i­ty as sur­pris­ing and unpre­dictable; he argues that one must mis­judge the com­plex­i­ty of a task to ful­ly engage cre­ative resources. This con­cept res­onat­ed with the author, who began writ­ing the book with the inten­tion of sim­ply refresh­ing “The Tip­ping Point” for its twen­ty-fifth anniver­sary. How­ev­er, as the writ­ing pro­gressed, it became clear that this endeav­or would trans­form into a com­plete­ly new work, demon­strat­ing the very essence of Hirschman’s insights.

The author’s jour­ney was great­ly sup­port­ed by con­tri­bu­tions from var­i­ous col­leagues and friends. Jacob Weis­berg played a cru­cial role by encour­ag­ing a return to “The Tip­ping Point.” The author express­es grat­i­tude to Tali Emlen, who pro­vid­ed exten­sive research assis­tance, and Nina Lawrence, who con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly by facil­i­tat­ing numer­ous inter­views. Acknowl­edg­ments extend to Adam Grant, Ben Naddaf-Hafrey, Eloise Lyn­ton, Dave Wirtshafter, Mala Gaonkar, and Charles Ran­dolph for their valu­able feed­back on ear­ly drafts.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the author thanks Asya Much­nick, the edi­tor at Lit­tle, Brown, for her metic­u­lous read­ings that improved the man­u­script, and cred­it is giv­en to Jael Goldfine for fact-check­ing and Allan Fal­low for copy­edit­ing. The author’s agent, Tina Ben­nett, is also rec­og­nized for her endur­ing sup­port.

Ulti­mate­ly, the most heart­felt grat­i­tude goes to the author’s family—Kate, Edie, and Daisy—highlighting their vital role in pro­vid­ing inspi­ra­tion and sup­port through­out the writ­ing process. The acknowl­edg­ments cel­e­brate not only the col­lab­o­ra­tion and men­tor­ship that went into cre­at­ing the book but also the per­son­al con­nec­tions that fuel the author’s pas­sion and moti­va­tion.