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In Part Three, Gladwell sets out to examine the concept of a larger overstory, one that spans an entire culture or country. He wants to know whether a story so large and widespread can be reinterpreted or reimagined.

Chapter Seven: The L.A. Survivors’ Club

Chapter Seven starts with a description of several Holocaust survivors in Los Angeles, who in 1961 pioneered the first Holocaust museum in the United States. A few more Holocaust museums opened across the United States over the next couple of decades, but the majority came after 1990. Gladwell states that in America, the Holocaust was not much talked about, not even by Jewish people or Holocaust survivors. History books published shortly after World War II include in-depth descriptions of the time period, but they contain very few details about concentration camps or other elements of the Holocaust.

Gladwell cites research showing that the word “Holocaust” was hardly used before 1978. That was the year an NBC miniseries, Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss, aired. It was the first time the Holocaust was given such intensive public attention in the United States. Since there were only three major networks at the time, half of America—100 million people—watched the program. Gladwell explains that, especially in the 1970s, television dictated much of American culture. When the miniseries aired in Europe, it had a similar effect, especially in West Germany. Gladwell points out that even though it was just a TV show, it established the name for the Holocaust and changed how people view it and speak about it, and not just in America. Storytellers have the ability to change the overstory.

Chapter Eight: Doing Time On Maple Drive

Chapter Eight starts with a description of how the fall of Eastern European communism came as a surprise to almost everyone. The fairly peaceful transformation and abrupt change was unexpected to regular citizens as well as analysts, journalists, and politicians. Gladwell explains that when revolutions are happening, people often look for signs of change in the wrong places. To illustrate the point, he describes the battle for the legalization of gay marriage in the United States. Evan Wolfson, a law student in the early 1980s, decided that increased overall acceptance of gay people could be accomplished through same-sex marriage, since in the United States marriage is the main formal expression of love and commitment. He was met with resistance and dismissal, since the prevailing misconceptions about gay people were based on negative stereotypes established in 1969 in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), a best-selling book by psychiatrist David Reuben. In a 2004 speech, President George W. Bush advocated for a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage.

Many of the people fighting for gay marriage thought that this was defeat, or at least a sign that the movement should slow its pace, and try for a different approach that would take decades. Within a decade, however, opposition to gay marriage faded and support steadily increased. People were surprised. According to Gladwell, they were looking for progress and signs of change in all the wrong places.

Gladwell reiterates that the Holocaust series changed Americans’ understanding of history. He also contrasts two televised treatments of homosexuality. In a 1992 TV movie, Doing Time on Maple Drive, a young man has to tell his family he is gay. This show did not have the same effect as Holocaust, because it did not portray the main character as a regular person who happened to be gay. His sexuality is a problem that needs to be solved. Will & Grace, a 1998 sitcom, takes the opposite approach. Its protagonist is a successful lawyer who happens to be gay. He has both straight and gay friends, and his sexuality isn’t a problem. Gladwell again references Damon Centola’s experiment (mentioned in Chapter Four) that sought to find out how many dissidents would be needed to disrupt a group consensus. Repeatedly, the number was 25 percent or more. With 20 or even 22 percent, there were signs of disruption but not enough to completely shift the group’s consensus. The simple presence on TV of shows like Will & Grace pushed American culture toward a tipping point even when there was no movement on the legal front.

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