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Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking | 
 enlarge | Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.99
Buy New: $6.00
You Save: $9.99 (62%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  916 reviews
Sales Rank: 153
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0316010669
Dewey Decimal Number: 153.44
EAN: 9780316010665
ASIN: 0316010669
Publication Date: April 3, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New - Has remainder mark. Fast shipping from trusted wholesaler with many exclusive publisher contracts.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"--a 24/7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us "mind blind," focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to "the Warren Harding Effect" (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the "dark side of blink," he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell's ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. --Barbara Mackoff
Product Description
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"--a 24/7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us "mind blind," focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to "the Warren Harding Effect" (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the "dark side of blink," he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making.In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell's ideas about what Blink Camp might look like.--Barbara Mackoff
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| Customer Reviews: Read 911 more reviews...
 This book will make you smarter - 'nuff said. May 2, 2008
Gladwell's "Blink", a fantastic follow up to "the Tipping Point", reveals what most of us have known since the dawn of Creation, but ignore none the less. Trust your gut. We can all know, in the blink of an eye, what's "really going on" in a situation or circumstance - if we'll take the time to be receptive to what's happening around us. This isn't New Age drivel, this is using your brain. He would have gotten 5 stars out of me, but the one missing component was the "how to blink for dummies" manual at the end of the book. Malcolm defines the problem with conviction and shares the solution with wit, but never really puts a finger on exactly how you can put it to work in your life. Then again, that's the beauty of it - it's there for you to find, you just need to use your brain a little more to get it. Great for business and for life, Blink is worth the read.
 The Power & The Danger Of Snap Decisions May 1, 2008
"Blink" reads more like a review of studies of the consequences of making snap decisions. Guess what? Sometimes you're right and sometimes you're not. How enlightening.
Nevertheless, the experiments that are discussed are fascinating, and will give you insight into when to trust your intuition.
A double, not a home run April 29, 2008
Gladwell does great in 1st and 2nd gears, however his premise never really gets rolling. He fails to bring the whole idea together of any formula for the idea of thin slicing. He merely says it exists, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. In another place, he says with rare profundity that it tends to work more with monumental decisions and less with incidental decisions, but even then he's rather vague about it.
The whole concept is highly fascinating, though all we get from this book are bits and pieces. A book needs a measure of coagulation.
One example of fuzzy reasoning in the book was the part about how a man's height makes people treat them differently to a significant degree. Gladwell cites a survey of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, indicating that 58% of them are six feet or taller, while among the general U.S. population, only 14% are six feet or taller. He concludes that boards of directors are biased toward the tall. One problem here that Gladwell overlooks is that a more likely explanation for the phenomenon is that tall people feel more confident about themselves and assert themselves more, as well as other genetic considerations. But Gladwell's answer to everything is discrimination, which is a short-sighted approach.
I did gain valuable insight from the incidents and studies mentioned. It's just that there's a critical chapter missing, namely a conclusive conclusion. So now how do we apply these ideas, Mr. Gladwell? I sincerely hope this is not a cliffhanger for the next book.
In a study this promising, I want a discussion that gets past 2nd gear. This reminds me of a classroom lecture where the instructor leaves out significant parts and gives the class an assignment to figure out the answers for themselves. Not having the luxury of raising our hands and having things clarified, it's incumbent upon Mr. Gladwell to give a more specified and in-depth outline for us to follow. I came away feeling very incomplete.
I Guess April 29, 2008
Snap judgments are arrived at by a ruthless pruning of information, which our brains process without our being aware of it. A good snap judgment occurs when the information which has been discarded is irrelevant to the matter in hand; a bad one when it is not. An overload of information leads to a paralysis of judgment, which is why information-gathering bureaucracies are often not merely inefficient but grotesquely error-prone.
Gladwell's book, which starts well enough, meanders and begins to go off the point about halfway through. This is probably because the subject cannot sustain a full-length study without digression. His style is conversational and easy to read but (for me at least) too colloquial.
 In the blink of an eye April 25, 2008
Malcolm Gladwell did a great job explaining thin-slicing. His examples were very memorable and easy to connect with for the most part. I couldn't put this book down! I am going into education and find this book really interesting on how we can set up schema's and think so quickly. In this book I found out just how important our unconsciousness is. This book is great if you want to learn about how we have a reason for something but can't really explain it. It is also great if you are one of those people with a gut feeling and have no real reason for it. I would recommend this book to anyone. I want to read the tipping point I hope that it will be just as entertaining as blink!
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