Blink

Malcolm Gladwell's second book draws on psychology and behavioral economics to examine the adaptive unconscious, the mental processes that reach conclusions quickly from relatively little information. Gladwell calls this skill thin-slicing and argues that snap judgments can be as good as careful deliberation, or better. His examples include a researcher who predicts whether a marriage will last, antiquities experts whose first look at the Getty kouros raised doubts, and a tennis coach who senses a double fault before it happens. He also covers failures of quick judgment, from the election of Warren Harding and New Coke to the police shooting of Amadou Diallo, and how priming and stereotypes can distort expert intuition.

Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson named it in 2005 as what she was reading, describing it as a guide to trusting gut feeling in decisions and sharpening rapid cognition. Serial entrepreneur Armina Sirbu said it and The Tipping Point taught her what systemic thinking is, and NETOPIA mobilPay founder Antonio Eram named it as one of several books that had a strong impact on him.