Taka's review
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
Taka's review
rating:
bookshelves: japan_jul07-present, social-science
status: Read in September, 2008
rating:
bookshelves: japan_jul07-present, social-science
status: Read in September, 2008
Fascinating--
Hats off to Gladwell for his elegant and simple prose, great story-telling knack, and excellent treatment of a fascinating subject. The only regret I have is that he doesn't fully deliver what he says he sets out to do in the beginning, which is: when to trust our unconscious and when not to trust it, and how to train it, which would have been engrossing if he had really done it. The book also lacks overall cohesion since apparently many of the chapters are reworkings of his New Yorker articles.
Despite these little foibles, the book is a feast of surprising, reality-busting psychology findings and implications about the ability of our unconscious to make snap judgments based on thin slices of information. It was thoroughly engaging from start to finish, and I enjoyed every bit of it.
Hats off to Gladwell for his elegant and simple prose, great story-telling knack, and excellent treatment of a fascinating subject. The only regret I have is that he doesn't fully deliver what he says he sets out to do in the beginning, which is: when to trust our unconscious and when not to trust it, and how to train it, which would have been engrossing if he had really done it. The book also lacks overall cohesion since apparently many of the chapters are reworkings of his New Yorker articles.
Despite these little foibles, the book is a feast of surprising, reality-busting psychology findings and implications about the ability of our unconscious to make snap judgments based on thin slices of information. It was thoroughly engaging from start to finish, and I enjoyed every bit of it.
