but here's another one that might be interesting.
From AudioFile
Have you ever wondered why love at first sight, so seemingly ill-advised, sometimes works out for the long-term? Malcolm Gladwell may have the answer. In BLINK, Gladwell asserts that snap judgments can quite often be as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately. Using a wide variety of examples--an ex-Marine's victory in a war-game simulation, a museum's purchase of a bogus statue, an emergency room's method for diagnosing heart attacks--Gladwell asks us to step back from overly analytical decision-making and trust our instincts and experience. Like his previous work, THE TIPPING POINT, BLINK is a thought-provoking, category-defying book. The audio is read by the author with care and conviction. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Best-selling author Gladwell (The Tipping Point) has a dazzling ability to find commonality in disparate fields of study. As he displays again in this entertaining and illuminating look at how we make snap judgments???about people's intentions, the authenticity of a work of art, even military strategy???he can parse for general readers the intricacies of fascinating but little-known fields like professional food tasting (why does Coke taste different from Pepsi?). Gladwell's conclusion, after studying how people make instant decisions in a wide range of fields from psychology to police work, is that we can make better instant judgments by training our mind and senses to focus on the most relevant facts???and that less input (as long as it's the right input) is better than more. Perhaps the most stunning example he gives of this counterintuitive truth is the most expensive war game ever conducted by the Pentagon, in which a wily marine officer, playing "a rogue military commander" in the Persian Gulf and unencumbered by hierarchy, bureaucracy and too much technology, humiliated American forces whose chiefs were bogged down in matrixes, systems for decision making and information overload. But if one sets aside Gladwell's dazzle, some questions and apparent inconsistencies emerge. If doctors are given an algorithm, or formula, in which only four facts are needed to determine if a patient is having a heart attack, is that really educating the doctor's decision-making ability???or is it taking the decision out of the doctor's hands altogether and handing it over to the algorithm? Still, each case study is satisfying, and Gladwell imparts his own evident pleasure in delving into a wide range of fields and seeking an underlying truth.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Reviewer: Donald Mitchell "Founder of The Billionaire Entrepreneurs' Master Mind -- http://billiondollarbusiness.blogspot.com/" (a Strategic Management professor, author and consultant in Boston) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
Like The Tipping Point, Blink has a very simple point which it elaborates from a variety of perspectives. In this case, the point is that our subconscious mind can integrate small, subtle clues to very quickly make great decisions . . . as long as we have been trained to know what clues to focus on.
In developing that simple idea, Mr. Gladwell makes the case for "going with your gut" in many instances . . . especially when time is of the essence (such as during emergencies and in combat). He also rescues analysis to show how analysis can train people to know what to look for so they can use their instincts more effectively.
But instincts have a downside. Based on conditioning, we make associations that are harmful to ourselves and to others. He recounts how an innocent man became a victim of under trained, over stimulated police officers and how even African-Americans display prejudice against African-Americans.
Most of the book is devoted to looking at prejudice and how to overcome it. For those who are interested in that subject, this book will be much more interesting than for those who want to understand how to improve their decision-making.
I thought that the book failed to reach the average mark as a book about how to improve decision-making. There's no real guidance for what we can each do to improve our important decisions. We are just left with hope that we can do better. I graded the book up a bit because I liked the insights into racism.
I thought the material on branded products was much too long and didn't add anything to what I knew already.
Mr. Gladwell writes well, though, so it's mostly a pleasant trip in the book. He makes science more interesting, but leaves a bit too much of the science out to make the results satisfying. He's writing for a dumbed-down audience with science backgrounds at the 8th grade level.
The book's opening made me feel like I was really going to learn something. As the book continued, I found myself disappointed compared to the high expectations that the opening set for learning better decision-making practices. As a result, all I got from the book was to pay attention to external clues and my own physiological cues as I react to a situation. I already do that, so I felt that the book didn't really deliver a solid benefit to me beyond teaching me a few new stories about decision makers.
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