Blink
A review of

Blink

The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Trust Your Instincts

by David Meyer

Malcom Gladwell’s bestseller explores the relationship between rational thought and intuition, with surprising insights into both.

Few authors before Malcolm Gladwell could pull off such outstanding brand maintenance. Remarkably, his mass popularity never undermines his reputation as a credible public intellectual, a rigorous, groundbreaking thinker who writes clearly and accessibly. He is an unusually intelligent man who can write and – as his three TED Talks show, speak – in simple bestseller prose. His consistent writing, rather than his deep thinking, may be Gladwell’s true genius. He posits his ideas as new ways of thinking. He cites scientific, academic and anecdotal research and interviews people who describe how they learned that his construct is correct. He’s expert at taking what you know and explaining it back to you in interesting, sometimes even revelatory ways.

Yet, Gladwell isn’t perfect. Blink sometimes reads like a stretched-out magazine article, and it repeats ideas. Some case studies are fascinating; some aren’t. Blink is an incongruous Gladwell book in that if you skip a few pages, you probably won’t miss anything important.


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    S. S. 3 months ago
    I am afraid it does not provide more insight as a common book review. This seems to be about the author and not the book.
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    R. G. 7 years ago
    On one hand, I think too much effort has been put in this review 'into the author' rather than the book itself.
    From a structure perspective, I do not see a clear demarcation line between the review part and the summary part. The structure of the book or the ideas in the book do not seem to me as clear either.

    With respect to the content of the summary - maybe it's the book not the summary - but I don't feel like I've learned something useful. I understand that split second decisions are good sometimes (and they may turn out to be better in some instances than well thought decisions) but I don't see here any techniques to help me take 'good' blink decisions. Also how to decide when it's good to take a blink decision and when it's a good idea to ponder a bit on things.
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      7 years ago
      Agreed, the summary is more about the author and his skill than the content of the book.