Customer Reviews

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the book that got everybody all excited a few years ago. The Harvard Business Review published a paper by K. Anders Ericsson "Making of an Expert". The biggest fans wrote their own books based on Ericsson's paper including; Geoff Covin's Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, Malcom Gadwell's Outliers: The Story of Success, Daniel Coyle's The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How. and a few other books. These other books are more commercially consumable products rather than research results and clinical explanations of talent development.

The The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology) is not light reading and one has to be prepared to put in the time, but make no mistake it is the quintessential book on Expertise and Expert Performance. I refer to this book fairly often in my own work and find it indispensable. Some of the subjects I continue to revisit in this book are:

Historical Accounts of Experts
Breaking Down the Structure of Expertise
Examining the Domains of Expertise
Arts, Sports and Motor Skills
Games and Memory
Mechanisms of Mediating Expertise

If you're a teacher, coach, trainer, mentor, parent or desire passionately to become an expert in any field this is an investment well worth making. I also recommend this book to anyone who is familiar with Dr. Carol Dweck's work on Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, or [ [ASIN:1841690244 Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Essays in Social Psychology)]] . The Cambridge Handbook dovetails nicely with her work.

One of the coolest books on the market. It is a compilation of articles by researchers who study experts in all different fields such as chess, soccer, medicine, financial advisors, etc. There are many findings that are totally at odds with what most people think it takes to be an expert. The main finding is that most experts are actually made, not born, and that expertise usually follows only after years of deliberate practice and continuous feedback. Many of the ideas in the book can be applied to other fields so it is a good book to read if you want know how to become an expert at what you do for a living or a hobby. It also provides good insights into what to look for when you need to hire an expert, like a surgeon or a lawyer.

I gave it four stars instead of five because even as research books go the writing is a bit dry. However, if there was ever a condensed version of this book written for the masses I suspect it would become a runaway best seller in a fashion to Thomas Stanley's The Millionaire Next Door. The Millionaire Next Door book is a research based book that disproved many of the common perceptions about how millionaires live - most actually do not drive flashy cars and wear designer clothes, but instead live below their means and are very frugal. I think this book could do the same to dispel common misconceptions about experts if it were rewritten for the general public.

I have noticed this book while I was reading "The Social Animal", and been very surprised that it was published in 2006. As a medical specialist, which is an expertise, as well, I can say that, what we call "sense de clinic" or "the gut feeling" is an expert opion, or a product of a function operation with subtle parameters. Those subtle parameters are rarely seen by laypeople, but when noticed, the importance of them is not clearly understood because of its role in its group is not understood. As Confucius said: "The begining of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.", and this book is very well written on expertise, and calls it with its proper name.I definitely recommend it to the people who wants to be an expert on any subject.

THE CAMBRIDGE HANDBOOK OF EXPERTISE AND EXPERT PERFORMANCE gathers reviews by psychologists and computer scientists alike on the area of expertise, researching studies, providing a guide to the latest literature, and including essays on experimental, observational and analytical techniques. College-level students in psychology or the social sciences will find it packed with theories of expert performance that do an excellent job of updating and expanding the vast changes in the discipline. From math and history to memory and creative thinking, case studies often pair with research results to reinforce findings.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch