Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005) Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell's Blink is about the snap judgments we make within the first two seconds of an encounter and how they affect our lives.

Rapid cognition is something we all experience, yet for most of us it isn't something we think about much. Gladwell has thought about it deeply, and the result is a book which presents a lot of new and very interesting information on a wide variety of subjects.

Although this book is grounded in the methods of psychology, it reminded me most of Freakonomics in how it uses its available tools to produce sweeping insights about our world. The topics covered include how some art experts can recognize a grandiose forgery, methods for predicting the future success of a marriage, and how one man beat the U.S. at its own elaborate war game. Each section of the book is fascinating in its own way.