The Giver译为“赐予者”或“授者”，是洛伊丝·洛利最著名的也是最受争议的作品。在The Giver里，作者描绘了一个想像出来的乌托邦世界。在这个社会里，人们的生活都被安排得好好的，人们不用决定工作，不用决定配偶，这些问题，社会都帮个人做好了决定。而这个世界也没有记忆、感情、颜色及音乐，人们只有最基本的生活需求。但有一个人例外，他一个人承担了整个世界该有的记忆，他必须独自承受痛苦、恐惧、和孤单，而他也同时知道什麼是温暖、幸福和爱。这个人被称为the receiver of memory，也就是the Giver。当12岁的男主角Jonas成为这个the receiver of memory的接班人后，他得到了他以前所不曾有过的经验，而当他知道愈多时，他愈发现这个世界的不合理，最后他选择了逃离……

"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject. For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanize the forces of resistance so effectively in part because he was what Gladwell calls a "Connector": he knew just about everybody, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each of the towns that he rode through. But Revere "wasn't just the man with the biggest Rolodex in colonial Boston," he was also a "Maven" who gathered extensive information about the British. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly whom to tell. The phenomenon continues to this day--think of how often you've received information in an e-mail message that had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching you. Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as the "stickiness" of ideas or the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple, clear explanations and entertainingly illustrative anecdotes, such as comparing the pedagogical methods of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, or explaining why it would be even easier to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the actor Rod Steiger. Although some readers may find the transitional passages between chapters hold their hands a little too tightly, and Gladwell's closing invocation of the possibilities of social engineering sketchy, even chilling, The Tipping Point is one of the most effective books on science for a general audience in ages. It seems inevitable that "tipping point," like "future shock" or "chaos theory," will soon become one of those ideas that everybody knows--or at least knows by name. --Ron Hogan, Amazon.com