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Philip Esformes

The man behind the largest healthcare fraud case the Department of Justice has ever prosecuted. Esformes owned hundreds of nursing homes and assisted living centers in Miami and used them to commit vast Medicare and Medicaid fraud.

Seth Abrutyn and Anna Mueller

Two sociologists who studied the suicide epidemic in Poplar Grove and wrote the book Life Under Pressure about it. Gladwell references their work in Part One.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

A sociologist who studied how individuals are treated (and behave) in groups that have skewed ratios, specifically women working with teams that are predominantly male.

Damon Centola

A college professor who researches tipping points using group dynamics with dissidents. His work shows support for the idea of the Magic Third.

Donald Stedman

Aerosol scientist who designed a device that can measure a vehicle’s emissions when the car drives past it. Gladwell references him (and his work) to discuss the Law of the Few.

Evan Wolfson

An American attorney and gay rights advocate. Gladwell references him when discussing revolutions, specifically in Chapter Eight, while looking at the legalization of gay marriage in the United States.

Paul E. Madden

An American lawyer who was named director of the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement in 1939. He devised a program that tracked prescriptions for opioids using a triplicate form, so there would be ongoing records of such prescriptions maintained by the government. States that adopted the triplicate protocol were far less impacted by the opioid epidemic.

Russell Portenoy

A physician concerned with pain management who believed that very few patients would become addicted to opioids and that most doctors would be able to identify patients at risk of developing addictions. He was concerned that painkillers would be underprescribed. He was a leader in the fight to stop the triplicate system from being adopted nationwide.

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