S.J. Parris
S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Adam Haslett
A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?
In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing" - filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.
Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology and displaying all of the brilliance that made The Tipping Point a classic, Blink changes the way you understand every decision you make. Never again will you think about thinking the same way.
Book Reviews
BookBrowse Blink combines one part popular science, one part market research and one part self-help in a book that, if it were a meal, would be heavy on the canapés but light on the main course. Full Review (members only, 739 words).
Publishers Weekly
Best-selling author Gladwell (The Tipping Point) has a dazzling ability to find commonality in disparate fields of study....But if one sets aside Gladwell's dazzle, some questions and apparent inconsistencies emerge....Still, each case study is satisfying, and Gladwell imparts his own evident pleasure in delving into a wide range of fields and seeking an underlying truth.
Kirkus Reviews
All these stories are nicely written and most inform and entertain at the same time, but they don't add up to anything terribly profound, despite the author's sometimes Skywalkerish enthusiasm. Brisk, impressively done narratives that should sell very well indeed, particularly to Gladwell's already well-established fan base.
Booklist - Donna Seaman
Gladwell writes about subtle yet crucial behavioral phenomena with lucidity and contagious enthusiasm. Unconscious knowledge is not the proverbial light bulb, he observes, but rather a flickering candle. Gladwell's groundbreaking explication of a key aspect of human nature is enlightening, provocative, and great fun to read.
Library Journal - Mary Ann Hughes
Journalist Gladwell (The Tipping Point) examines the process of snap decision making. [He] gets the science facts right and has the journalistic skills to make them utterly engrossing...for once a best seller will be more than worthy. Essential for all libraries.
San Francisco Chronicle - David Kipen
[E]ven this lapse might be forgivable, if only Gladwell's central thesis hung together better. Unfortunately, this thesis more or less boils down to: Lickety-split thinking is trustworthy, except when it's not. It works for spotting forgeries, but not for picking out comfortable chairs. It works for surprising enemy generals in battle but, for electing presidents less handsome and stupid than Warren G. Harding, not so much.
Pittsburg Post-Gazette - Bob Hoover
Gladwell's examples are fun, interesting and provocative and could lead some of his readers to trust their initial impressions with more conviction.
It's going to take more than snap judgments to understand the overall meaning of Blink, however.
While he's a wide-ranging researcher and an engaging writer, he's not skilled enough to link his "experiments" into a unified whole. His conclusion, "trust yourself," needs more than intuition to accept it.
The New York Times - Janet Maslin
The author can be simultaneously lively and serious, with particularly good instincts for finding quirky, varied examples to prove his points. But he delivers what is essentially a hybrid of marketing wisdom and self-help -- stronger on broad, catchy constructs than on innovative thinking.
Time Magazine
Gladwell's real genius is as a storyteller. He's like an omniscient, many-armed Hindu god of anecdotes he plucks them from every imaginable field of human endeavor.
The Seattle Times - William Dietrich Blink is not a glib handbook of how to think, or a guide of what to think. But it will make you think about how you think, when you think in a blink.
New York Times - David Brooks
If you want to trust my snap judgment, buy this book: you'll be delighted. If you want to trust my more reflective second judgment, buy it: you'll be delighted but frustrated, troubled and left wanting more.
USA Today - Bob Minzesheimer
Gladwell loves analogies. Here's one for his book: If Blink were a college course, it wouldn't be a graduate seminar on the cutting edge. It would be a popular introductory survey course, and for most readers, that's good enough to start us thinking in new ways about how we think.
When his daughter, Amy, died suddenly of a heart condition, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife moved in with their son-in-law and their three young grandchildren. His story tells how a family makes the possible out of the impossible.
You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family.
The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear, or bury. It is about what happens to love during wartime, when those we cherish leave. And how every story-of love or war-is about looking left when we should have been looking right.
Masterfully blending true events with fiction, this blockbuster historical thriller delivers a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
I read this book in two days and found it so refreshing. Although you will learn a great deal about barn owls by reading it, the book is not just ...
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I enjoyed reading this book, however, feel that this is not completely her own ideas. This books remembers me of a cross between 'ghost','Sixth ...
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Lisa See has written a great book! This story is satisfying on many levels, some scenes horrifying, but seemingly truthful, and her handling of the ...
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Amazon 'buy button' rumors abound(Mar 18 2010) Rumors swirled today that Amazon could revoke the buy buttons for books by Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin, or Hachette if the major publishers can't...
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Amazon's e-pricing threats(Mar 18 2010) With Apple's iPad launch just weeks away, Amazon raised the stakes again when it threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online...
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Blink
(members only, 739 words).
Library Journal - Mary Ann Hughes
San Francisco Chronicle - David Kipen
The New York Times - Janet Maslin
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