New Yorker staff writer and author Malcolm Gladwell will speak at 8 p.m. Nov. 13 in Alumni Arena, North Campus, as part of UB’s Distinguished Speakers Series.

A staff writer for the New Yorker since 1996, Gladwell has been called one of the top 50 intellectual leaders of the decade. He has a notable gift for interpreting new ideas in the social sciences, grounding them in academic research and making that research understandable, practical and valuable to general audiences.

In his book “The Tipping Point: How Little things Can Make a Big Difference”—the 2013 UB Reads selection—he describes that magic moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold and spreads like wildfire.

He also is the author of “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,” “Outliers: The Story of Success” and a collection of New Yorker stories, “What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures.”

In his just-published book “David and Goliath,” he considers “hidden rules” that he claims shape the balance between the weak and the mighty, the powerful and the dispossessed. He takes the reader from the battlefields of Northern Ireland and Vietnam, through successful and unsuccessful classrooms, and into the minds of cancer researchers and civil rights leaders to demonstrate how fundamentally we misunderstand the meaning of advantage and disadvantage.

TIME Magazine named Gladwell one of its “100 Most Influential People” in 2005. He was chosen for Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers” (2010 and 2009), was ranked No. 10 on the 2011 “The Thinkers 50” list and Newsweek chose him as one of the “Top 10 New Thought Leaders of the Decade.”

Tickets for the lecture range from $24 to $42. Contributing series sponsors United University Professions (UUP) and TIAA-CREF, along with the UB Alumni Association and the UB Office of Donor Relations, are offering discount vouchers that provide significant cost savings on ticket purchases.

For more information, visit the DSS website.