|
|
|
Average Customer Review
Share your thoughts with other customers
|
|
|
The most helpful favourable review
The most helpful critical review
64 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
Enjoyable read
Gladwell's prose is effortlessly readable and the reader is constantly entertained by his anecdotes. I don't think he is a great thinker, but he presents his concepts very clearly and you immediately see how they are reflected in your own life. What the book lacks is a structured argument -by the end you feel as if it hasn't really gone anywhere. Nevertheless it's a very...
Published 16 months ago by Janie
|
› See more 5 star, 4 star reviews |
 |
47 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
Informed Intuition Beats Analysis and Knee-Jerk Prejudices
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...
Published on 3 Mar 2005 by Professor Donald Mitchell
|
› See more 3 star, 2 star, 1 star reviews |
|
|
64 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
Enjoyable read, 7 Jul 2008
Gladwell's prose is effortlessly readable and the reader is constantly entertained by his anecdotes. I don't think he is a great thinker, but he presents his concepts very clearly and you immediately see how they are reflected in your own life. What the book lacks is a structured argument -by the end you feel as if it hasn't really gone anywhere. Nevertheless it's a very enjoyable read. Along similar lines, I would recommend Steve Taylor's excellent Making Time Making Time: Why Time Seems to Pass at Different Speeds and How to Control It, which 'unpacks' why we perceive time passing at different speeds in different situations and shows how we can become free of it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
 
|
|
|
|
|
|
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
Blink! Great reading but not much else..., 6 April 2005
Firstly this book's a bit pricey for a 250-page paperback. Secondly, you will probably read it in the time it takes to blink. And thirdly, despite the misleading comment on the cover, it does not tell you how to unlock the mysterious subconscious world from where the wonderfully meaty reading comes.But after all, that is what the book is. A series of compelling anecdotes and socio-psychological experiments revealing how much of our perception is done behind the scenes of our subconscious, and that comprehensively prove that we are not as liberal and easy-going that we think we are. It hasn't revolutionised my thinking quite yet, but it has helped me to trust the occasional gut-feeling and research further into the clues on people's faces. Pretty useful book, but not an end in itself.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
Flexing my intuition muscle!, 9 Jul 2009
"Blink" inspires me to listen to my intuition as I pay attention to my initial impulses and not over-think or second-guess myself. Malcolm Gladwell speaks of "thin slicing" - that first, unexamined "intuitive hit" that we experience before we start to analyze situations. Trusting my intuition can be particularly challenging when I have personal agendas that conflict with intuitive information I receive. I find that my intuitive skill set is easy to access when I am present with any given moment and not lost in my thought process, analyzing every little thing.
Another book that has strengthened my intuitive skill-set is Ariel & Shya Kane's Working on Yourself Doesn't Work: The 3 Simple Ideas That Will Instantaneously Transform Your Life. It is a brilliant book that has taught me that choices are always appropriate when I don't reach for conclusions based on my past experiences. With their easy & practical principles, I have found a deep sense of ease in my life as I learn to trust my intuition. Within the realm of wellbeing - intuition blooms!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
47 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
Informed Intuition Beats Analysis and Knee-Jerk Prejudices, 3 Mar 2005
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
Fascinating read, but lacks conclusion, 16 Mar 2005
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Blink and found the research Malcolm Gladwell had done into the many different aspects of the topic he'd chosen to write about fascinating.The research presented on interpreted what's going on in the mind from facial expressions was particularly interesting. I felt the book built to a crescendo, creating a very strong case for there being a resource that we could all tap into that is intuition or blink type decision making or gut feel, but then didn't pull everything together at the end with a conclusion describing how readers of the book could make better use of this resource in their own lives. I eagerly read the chap titled conclusion, but it just presented more (very interesting) material on blink-type decision making. I'm left feeling that I want a bit more on this topic. I thoroughly enjoyed the read nonetheless and will eagerly look for his next book too. His style is excellent, very readable, the kind of book that makes you want to turn the pages - relatively unusual for a non-fiction book.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
not as good as it looks, 13 Aug 2006
the examples are interesting to begin with but then just repeat througout the book. the major concepts (thin-slicing etc.) could be dealt with effectively in a book a quarter the size - i feel most of it is just padding. no sense of great insight here, just a few good ideas that would have been better presented in magazine articles (which is apparently the authors natural habitat). mr gladwell does, however, have magnificent hair.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
80 of 98 people found the following review helpful:
Trust your gut instinct..., 9 Mar 2006
...and don't buy this book.I know what you're thinking. You're thinking you read the Tipping Point and couldn't see what all the fuss was about, so why bother with Blink. But you're also thinking, look at all the good reviews that hail Blink as some kind of masterwork. Is he really onto something about the nature of thinking this time? Well, no he isn't. This is exactly the same format as the Tipping Point. Some fairly interesting anecdotes and scientific experiments linked by an extemely loose 'theory' that is in no way proven by the book. The anecdote-based approach to the argument was a bit novel the first time around in the Tipping Point. Now it's a bit tedious as the 'shock' conclusions are telegraphed well in advance. You can almost feel the 'then the researchers noticed something strange' moments waiting to pop out. What about the argument itself? The evidence in favour of the theory is lightweight in the extreme. I think most people could have constructed a more convincing theory, with some real evidence, when they were at school. What's more he even equivocates around the central idea. We are really good at making snap judgments sometimes. But, hey, some of our snap judgments are bad. Might that not suggest that a lot of snap judgments are a bit random? So lightweight ideas. A theory that isn't proven. And a gimmicky story-based approach to 'evidence'. E minus, must try harder. I bet marketing people will love it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
53 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting enough, but an expanded article rather than a book, 22 Feb 2007
Gladwell certainly writes well and entertainingly about an interesting subject - but as each new chapter started I began by thinking 'right, NOW we are going to have some advances, NOW the arguments are going to be explored and developed,' and basically, they never were. The book said what it had to say really within the first couple of chapters, with examples of where 'thin-slicing' worked, and examples of where it didn't.
In the end, what it came down to was 'well here are situations whereby 'intuition' or a snap response as opposed to an overload of information wins out' - and whoops, 'here we have situations where people have made some very serious errors of judgement because they have worked from gut feelings that are actually prejudiced, and their 'unconcious biases' have been lethal.' And here are some more examples of these situations. And here are even more examples. And - well here are a few more.
But the book as a whole didn't really go anywhere.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
69 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
This book seems unfinished, 14 Feb 2005
I am slightly disappointed with this book. As a reader who really enjoyed Gladwell's previous book 'The Tipping Point' I had looked forward to his new book. In some respects the book is like I hoped it would be: the topic choice is very interesting, the writing style is smooth and entertaining, the many anecdotes are very enjoyable and there are some interesting descriptions of experiments. Anyone should be able to pick up some interesting stories, points, facts and views from this book. What disappoints me though is that the book does not really deliver what it promises. In the introduction chapter the author promises to answer three questions: 1) Can Blink-descisions be as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately, 2) When should we trust our instincts and when should we be wary of them?, 3) (how) can our snap judgments and first impressions be educated and controlled? Although the many stories in the book certainly imply many clues to answers to these questions, explicit answers to these three questions are not clearly given. In fact, when I finished reading I felt like the author had forgotten to include an concluding and integrating chapter in which he would explicitly answer these questions and summarize and conclude. But that chapter is really missing. Due to that the book really lacks clarity. Although this book is disappointing I won't stop following Gladwell's writings. His previous book was better than this one and I'll bethis next one will be better too.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
only part of the story, 7 Aug 2009
The points this book makes are valid and interesting but I felt that the message was repetitive and dumbed down to the point where it basically said "hey! don't bother thinking! trust your gut!"
Which is fine, but there was very little attempt to address the many, many time that 'gut' gets things horribly wrong.
Read this book, it's ok, but make sure you read Risk by Dan Gardiner immediately afterwards for the rest of the story.
Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Amazon Home
