Though not as addictively mind-opening as his previous book, the brilliant must-read The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell tackles another interesting subject here from a variety of angles. Blink is about intuition and making snap decisions, how people think without really thinking.
The book starts out with a story of a museum curator who is given what appears through scientific studies to be an authentic ancient Greek Kouros statue. It's a find that would put the small museum on the map. However, when it brought in numeous experts to preview it's new purchase, each expert had the sense within the first few seconds of seeing the piece that it was a fake. And indeed it was.
Gladwell then moves into other interesting examples like: a scientist who has developed a method of determining after 3 seconds of listening to a couple argue whether or not they will someday divorce; a product marketer who pioneered insights into the consumer's unconscious reasonings for choosing products based on their packaging; the new trend of "speed-dating" and how people can judge within seconds whether someone is right for them; and the Amadou Diallo incident in the Bronx, in which a group of police officers mistakenly killed an innocent man based on impaired intuition.
It's a broad subject but it is explored in a relatively thin volume. Though he illustrates his examination of the premise with many fascinating examples, it feels by the end like he hasn't gone far enough and I wanted more of a clearer picture. Though maybe that is because Gladwell's books are so inherently readable that any amount leaves you wanting more.
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Good review. I think Blink is kind of like the first few seasons of the West Wing. There's a bigger story, but it's told through lots of intriguing, disconnected smaller stories. Did I walk away from the book with anything tangible? Perhaps not. But his examples are fascinating, like the way he deconstructed the Pepsi Challenge/New Coke fiasco from the mid-80s.
Wow, I forgot about the Taste Test stuff. Definitely one of the hightlights of the book. And a good example of what makes Gladwell so fun to read. He uses examples that most of us have heard of but give us an insight that we probably glossed over when we first heard about it.