Editorial Review:
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
Average Customer Rating: 
Not my favorite  2008-07-01
Started out really liking it, but it suddenly started feeling suspiciously like a self-help book. I'm not crazy into that.
Our Hidden Programming  2008-06-20
Malcolm Gladwell is a "gatekeeper." In his book, Blink, he opens the gate to a room of self-discovery - a room that allows the reader, perhaps for the first time, to realize that our actions and judgments often are not as "objective" as we might think. Mr. Gladwell, through a series of examples and stories, explains that we each have our own "programming" - dare I say "prejudices" - about how we (and the cultures we grow up in) judge and respond to things we "see" and "know to be true".
He also says there are other more benign, untainted impressions that come to us in the "blink" of an eye. About these untainted impressions he says: "We don't know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don't always appreciate their fragility." Implicitly he suggests that we also don't realize how powerful our "programming" is to potentially override and taint those benign and fragile first impressions.
Mr. Gladwell provides examples of what some people have done to preserve their "blink" experiences and offset their "pre-programming" - a fun read - I recommend it.
As I was reading through the book, I was reminded of two other books (both of which I highly recommend) by Ariel and Shya Kane. In Working on Yourself Doesn't Work: A Book About Instantaneous Transformation and Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment, the authors include discussions of human mechanical behaviors - behaviors we absorb from our families and cultures at an early age. They point out that we are mostly unaware of these mechanics and until we become aware of them, they can influence and even "control" our behavior and life choices - very eye-opening and easy to read as well!
All three of these books are well worth reading - enjoy!
The Author is a Genius. He is a Thought Leader. He brings new concepts to debate, to the world. 2008-06-13
This review will be brief, but decisive. Like the "blink" - the book's namesake.
blink - refers to the first few seconds (really two seconds) or less - moments really - in which split-second decisions are made. Often life and death decisions. Often decisions which are - by their nature - most often based on preconceptions, prejudice, prejudgment, or ingrained - evolved - subconscious beliefs, stereotypes, and conditioning.
The book, through several cases or examples, explores split-second decision making. Decision making when you are pressed. Decision making under great uncertainty - where all the facts are not known and you don't have time to get to know them. Decision making when you don't have time to reason - or to consciously really thinks out.
It is about how time constraints impact decisions. How they impact the quality of the decisions.
Where all you really have is your "intuition". Which is often right, but is also often wrong.
Through a case study-type analysis, Malcolm Gladwell, a brilliant thinker and writer - an original and ground breaking thinker - explores the issues related to these split-second or less than split-second decisions.
If are interested in learning about the brain, decisions, and human psychology and sociology, then I highly recommend this book. If you are not interested in any of the foregoing, but want to see a brilliant thinker and writer in action (Malcolm Gladwell), then I urge you to buy and read "blink".
Good collection of stories  2008-06-11
For me, this book was a good collection of stories, that hold some useful idea in them. And that is really exciting. But, unfortunately, as it was said above, Gladwell fails to bring the general idea (at least until the few paragraphs at the end of the book) and usually whiffle between those short stories. What's good - he gives you some ideas of what you might want to explore more seriously later.
May be readable, may be not. But certainly wont improve your intuition at all 2008-06-08
Forgive my poor English. I would like to quote a passage on "Competing on analytics by Davenport and Harris" which wrote what I failed to express. Enjoy!
"It's ironic that a book praising intuition would arise and become popular just when many organisations are relying heavily on analytics, but then perhaps that's part of its romantic appeal. It is fun and persuasive, but it doesnt make clear that intuition is only appropriate under what circumstances. The author is undoubtedly correct, for example, that human beings evolved a capability to make accurate and quick decisions about each other's personality and intentions, and it's rare for formal analysis to do that as well. Yet even the author argues that intuitions is a good guide to action only when it's backed by many years of expertise. Any many of the author's examples of intuition are only possible because of years of analytical research in the background, such as Dr. John Gottsman's rapid and seemingly intutitive judgements of whether a married couple he observes will stay together. He's only able to make such assessment because he observed and statistically analyzed thousands of hours of videotaped intactions by couples. It's also clear that decision makers have to use intuition when they have no data and must make a very rapid decision - as in the author's example of police officers deciding whether to shot a suspect." pg13-14
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