A Blink May Tell People What You Are Thinking !. Review on Blink - Malcolm Gladwell

Blink was written by Malcolm Gladwell and the book's cover was designed by Yoori Kim. It was published by Little Brown in January 2005. The ISBN # 0316172324. It comes in hard cover and pocket books. I have the pocket book, (about 290 pages), that I paid $10.00 CAD.

There Are Four Chapters In This Book

The Theory of Thin Slices, (how a bit of knowledge goes a long way),

The Locked Door, (the secret life of snap decisions)

The Warren Harding Error, (why we fall for tall dark and handsome men)

Paul Van Riper's Big Victory, (creating structure for spontaneity).

My Review

The author doesn't trust anyone ones opinions except his own.

The book begins in 1983 when a Greek statue, (called Kouros), is bought at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The curator of the museum had the documents that came with it looked at by archeologists and had consulted with their lawyer to insure the statue was real.

The buyer paid $10 million USD and for some reason the curator had a new set of experts, that specializes in Greek art to look at the Kourous again.

Evelyn Harrison and the other experts told him it wasn't authentic.

He suggests that we all make our best decisions in a few seconds, (like trusting your gut feelings).

For example the Warren Harding Error , is a discussion on if we should make snap decisions or not.

In this book he tells us what we should be doing when we are meeting people, (if their hands are crossed they don't want us to come near them), how to read facial expressions, (if they yawn or keep looking at other people they are bored).

Our facial muscles can give us a clue how to talk to them. If their muscles are tense try to calm them down with a joke or tell them how nice they look.

His Quotes

''When you walk out into the street and suddenly realize that a truck is going to crash into you do you have time to think through all your options? Of course not.''

''Haste makes waste, look before you leap, stop and think and don't judge a book by it's cover.''

''The only way that human beings could ever have survived as a species for as long as we have is that we've developed another kind of decision-making apparatus that's capable of making very quick judgments based on very little information.''

What I Think

It took Malcolm Gladwell two years to research the material in this book.

We learn how to find out information when we are working. If our boss always sits higher than us he'll be a mean one.

There are a number of examples to help us understand his book such as African-Americans, Police, Lawyers, Doctors and sports people.

Kourous is an example of how we need to know a lot about what we are going to do before we do it.

My Conclusion

I learned a lot from this book and enjoyed reading it very much.

Thanks for reading my review.

©LL2005