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| Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking | 
 enlarge | Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £9.99
Buy New: £4.99
You Save: £5.00 (50%)
New (25) from £3.60
Avg. Customer Rating:  68 reviews
Sales Rank: 251
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0141014598
EAN: 9780141014593
ASIN: 0141014598
Publication Date: February 23, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 An enjoyable read May 16, 2008
26 out of 31 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed reading the book "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. It is an easy read yet very profound. I said to myself "wow! How many times have I known in an instant that I was right about something but because it was inconvenient at the time to acknowledge it, I disregarded what I knew". In the end my initial hunch was correct!
I really enjoyed the chapter "Seven Seconds in the Bronx: The Delicate Art of Mind reading". It was about the NYPD's encounter with Amadou Diallo but it really hit home the concept of "the judgments we make and the impressions we form of other people". In the case of Amadou Diallo the policemen's "mind reading" was way off base. Many times people rely on past experiences to dictate how they should act NOW and ignore the
information right in front of them. Simply put, they were not present.
A book I really enjoyed about being present is Ariel & Shya Kanes, "How To Create a Magical Relationship". One powerful chapter in the book was "You are not the story of your life". It reminded me of all the times that my expectations of how something should turn out caused it to turn out exactly as I had expected, as if it were a self-fulfilling prophecy. I realized it was my unconscious expectations that determined the outcome of something, rather than seeing what was truly in front of me and making the appropriate choices. I highly recommend both of these books.
 Blink March 20, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Really enjoyable & easy read. I found it very insightful and opened my eyes to the power of my subconcious!!
An Insightful Read March 12, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
With roughly 260 pages and seven chapters (including the conclusion), "Blink" is a well-written and insightful book on the subject of accurate "snap judgment" or two-second of "looking." This book gives us, the reader, a great deal of information about our "moment" to see things accurately, either in quick reaction, warnings, reading strangers, as it is very much like "gut" feelings or first impressions.
I personally found this book to be quite fascinating and insightful to which I enjoyed both Gladwell's flowing writing style and his clear organization. It took me a good few hours to read it as I could not put the book down. To understand our "snap" judgment is to reach an understanding of how basic a human being really is. Today's world, with all the media and overwhelming information, we tend to lose this kind of sense in ourselves.
I would very much recommend this book.
 Too much psuedo science! February 19, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
The brain and thought analysis are always interesting subjects. Gladwell uses quirky anecdotes to present his hypotheisis which is essentially that visceral or instinctive thinking can sometimes out perform rational analysis. Although some of the anecdotes are interesting and thought provoking (particularly the one on racism), I found the lack of scientifc methodolgy in his arguments extremly annoying. Something is either appropriate for scientific analysis or it is not. One would think thought and brain analysis fits perfectly into the scientific remit. But this book subsituites science with psuedo science. All too often anecdotes are used. But anyone can cherry pick anecdotes to argue anything, so what's the objective of this book? Is it a scientific hypotheisis or just some writer looking for a "wow".
I think the art of popular science writing is the ability to explain something complicated, in simple terms and thus bring something which is esoteric to the masses. There are many talented writed who can do exactly this: Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking or Robert Winston.
However, I am always a bit apprenhensive when a journalist with little or no scientific background enters the scientific paradigm. All too often, they substitute the scientific approach for the "wow wow wow" approach. By the end of this book, Gladwell didn't make change my mind.
Gladwell writes like a dream February 18, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Gladwells Blink does an awesome job at explaining gut feeling. it also gives you pointes on when to use it, and equally important, when not to use it. In a time where people focus on measurables and facts above feelings and precognitions, it's a refreshing read.
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