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Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Paperback – April 3, 2007
Malcolm Gladwell (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant-in the blink of an eye-that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why 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 are 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 tennis 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 "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police.
Blink reveals that great decision 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 variables.
- Print length296 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBack Bay Books
- Publication dateApril 3, 2007
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.88 x 8.25 inches
- ISBN-109780316010665
- ISBN-13978-0316010665
- Lexile measure1100L
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Product details
- ASIN : 0316010669
- Publisher : Back Bay Books; Annotated edition (April 3, 2007)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 296 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780316010665
- ISBN-13 : 978-0316010665
- Lexile measure : 1100L
- Item Weight : 10.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.88 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1996. He is the author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw. Prior to joining The New Yorker, he was a reporter at the Washington Post. Gladwell was born in England and grew up in rural Ontario. He now lives in New York.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2017
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Gladwell had made a chunk of change telling us we can "blink" and know the truest of truths... that our guts are inherently correct (well, except the many times he points out how incorrect they are, due to racism (except when he back pedals and says maybe the people in that example aren't racist, actually), sexism (except when he says it's possible sexism was not, in fact, a factor in such and such examples), and other biases (which the book both promises to teach us to control and says we have *no ability* to control), and that by "thin-slicing" (making use of the "adaptive unconscious" of our mind, which, incidentally, he says repeatedly can never be unlocked) we can be better people, fight wars "better", and solve the problems of the world.
It's a book for the casual reader, so the stories he uses to back up his arguments are often terribly irresponsible anecdotes. The studies he references are rarely detailed sufficiently so that the reader could know whether they'd had any controls, had been repeated and peer reviewed, etc. They're riddled with opinion and assumptions about results, and we're left to assume the lens from which he makes these statements is pure and holy.
The best take away from this self help quickie is that some people will, as a result of spending a dozen or so hours reading it and thinking about their minds and how they work, will be, going forward, more introspective, which is not a bad thing. The worst take away is that some (and I fear most) people will glean only the basest concept from his promises: that their guts are always right, leaving them less introspective and more irrationally bold and self-satisfied.
Bottom line: By the end of very story I already knew what he was going to say about snap judgment. I REALLY had to force myself to finish reading this book, not worth my time and most importantly, it didn’t add anything to my life.
I'm a bottom-line kind of person and I don't read for fun; I read to gain applicable knowledge. Gladwell proved his concept in the first 30-50 pages and that was good enough for me. He then proceeded to continue proving the concept for another 200 pages. I hardly learned how to actually apply the concepts of rapid-cognition from this book and I'm annoyed at how much of my time was wasted. I wish he proved the concept in 30-50 pages and followed it up with actual ways to take advantage of that concept.
This book verified something that I believed to be true (rapid-cognition) without providing ways to practically exploit the theory. I'm not buying anything else of Gladwell's, but I would recommend looking up the sparknotes/summary of this book.
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Anyhow, i am only 50 or so pages in and notwithstanding it somewhat defeats the argument, i will not rush to judgement and will read the rest of the book



Some very interesting examples to get you thinking about the 'blink' reaction from different areas of the authors life and experiences. It has certainly made me think and I've found myself trusting my first thoughts more often without having to re-think things which alter our perceptions through over thinking. I've found myself googling many of the experients and tests he mentions in order rewatch them as many examples featured in a leadership workshop I went to.
Definitely worth a read to expand the way we think.
