INTERESTING BUT NOT ESSENTIAL
Mr. Gladwell is very talented. He certainly did his homework on this one. At the end of the book though I was left wondering, "Okay...so what is the conclusion?" The book came to a rather abrupt ending and I couldn't tell if the author was for or against snap judgments.

My biggest disappointment is that there was no warning regarding explicit language. I was listening to this work on CD with my young daughters in the car when all of a sudden he starts using profane words in an effort to quote others. Was it necessary to include such language?

Not my favorite
Started out really liking it, but it suddenly started feeling suspiciously like a self-help book. I'm not crazy into that.

Our Hidden Programming


Malcolm Gladwell is a "gatekeeper." In his book, Blink, he opens the gate to a room of self-discovery - a room that allows the reader, perhaps for the first time, to realize that our actions and judgments often are not as "objective" as we might think. Mr. Gladwell, through a series of examples and stories, explains that we each have our own "programming" - dare I say "prejudices" - about how we (and the cultures we grow up in) judge and respond to things we "see" and "know to be true".

He also says there are other more benign, untainted impressions that come to us in the "blink" of an eye. About these untainted impressions he says: "We don't know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don't always appreciate their fragility." Implicitly he suggests that we also don't realize how powerful our "programming" is to potentially override and taint those benign and fragile first impressions.

Mr. Gladwell provides examples of what some people have done to preserve their "blink" experiences and offset their "pre-programming" - a fun read - I recommend it.

As I was reading through the book, I was reminded of two other books (both of which I highly recommend) by Ariel and Shya Kane. In Working on Yourself Doesn't Work: A Book About Instantaneous Transformation and Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment, the authors include discussions of human mechanical behaviors - behaviors we absorb from our families and cultures at an early age. They point out that we are mostly unaware of these mechanics and until we become aware of them, they can influence and even "control" our behavior and life choices - very eye-opening and easy to read as well!

All three of these books are well worth reading - enjoy!

The Author is a Genius. He is a Thought Leader. He brings new concepts to debate, to the world.
This review will be brief, but decisive. Like the "blink" - the book's namesake.

blink - refers to the first few seconds (really two seconds) or less - moments really - in which split-second decisions are made. Often life and death decisions. Often decisions which are - by their nature - most often based on preconceptions, prejudice, prejudgment, or ingrained - evolved - subconscious beliefs, stereotypes, and conditioning.

The book, through several cases or examples, explores split-second decision making. Decision making when you are pressed. Decision making under great uncertainty - where all the facts are not known and you don't have time to get to know them. Decision making when you don't have time to reason - or to consciously really thinks out.

It is about how time constraints impact decisions. How they impact the quality of the decisions.

Where all you really have is your "intuition". Which is often right, but is also often wrong.

Through a case study-type analysis, Malcolm Gladwell, a brilliant thinker and writer - an original and ground breaking thinker - explores the issues related to these split-second or less than split-second decisions.

If are interested in learning about the brain, decisions, and human psychology and sociology, then I highly recommend this book. If you are not interested in any of the foregoing, but want to see a brilliant thinker and writer in action (Malcolm Gladwell), then I urge you to buy and read "blink".

Good collection of stories
For me, this book was a good collection of stories, that hold some useful idea in them. And that is really exciting. But, unfortunately, as it was said above, Gladwell fails to bring the general idea (at least until the few paragraphs at the end of the book) and usually whiffle between those short stories. What's good - he gives you some ideas of what you might want to explore more seriously later.