Rating: 7/10You have to hand it to Malcolm Gladwell - he has taken a subject that most of us would lazily dismiss as "intuition", and has written a substantial and a fairly engrossing book on it. He starts off laying out three objectives - to convince the reader that "blink" decisions are as good as any; to enable the reader to figure out when to trust such decisions and when not to; and finally, to help understand how such decisions can actually be controlled. To his credit, he has written a cohesive and well-structured book that attempts to do exactly that.
One of the fascinating aspects in this book for me was the wide and diverse nature of the anecdotal stories that he has used to bolster his arguments. these anecdotes range from military war games to speed-dating, from Herman Miller chairs to cola wars, from gamblers to trombone players in orchestras, and from autism to shootouts in the Bronx.
On the flip side, one of the pitfalls in stretching a thin subject line to a full-fledged book is that of belaboring a point .... and Gladwell does that at times. Huh? We get it. Can we now move on please?
Finally, what prevents this book from going over a 7/10 for me is that there were no real takeaways for , counter to Gladwell's claim of the potential to end up with "a different and better world" - a claim he makes in the introductory chapter itself. Sure, it's a fascinating read but there were no learnings at the end of it. However, just for his use of diverse anecdotes, it was worth the time spent in reading this book for me.
Pros: Cohesively structured, fascinating anecdotes
Cons: Points are belabored at times
Way to go.
ReplyDeleteBlink is on my book shelf and now taken off priority list
i have somehow figured that the authors seldom match the quality of the first book they write.
ReplyDeletethe newspaper columist writer category have few great points and few not so great ones.(world is flat :Thomas Freidman) The writing is lucid and their ability to communicate is superb(something to learn). Their ability to explain seemingly intricate subjects are good,the pulse on readers is superb.
Their exposure to many kinds of people and their own work helps them peice together examples which are very diverse and hence "believable".
That is where the issue is,they lackrigour and hence after a good reading "what". Thus for a good feel good reading these books are cool,for repeatability and learnings not so cool.
the fight is between causality and correlation.Read his next one "Outliers".