Malcolm Gladwell, Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

From the publishers fly jacket:

Don't think - Blink !

 In his landmark best seller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell derefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understan the world within. Blink is a book about how we thinkg withouth thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instatn - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brillian decision makers, while others are consistently inept? WWhy do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error ? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom ? And why aer the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others ?

 In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tenis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blnk": the election of Warren Harding; New Coke; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decisoin makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing" - filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of vaiiables.

 Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology and displaying all o fthe brilliance that made The Tipping Point a classic, Blink changes the way you understan every decision you make. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.

Malcolm Gladwell is a saff writer for The New Yorker. He was formerly a business and science reporter at the Washington Post. For more information abou Malcolm Gladwell, go to his web site at www.gladwell.com .


Malcolm Gladwell, Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Mew York, Little, Brown. 2005.