Blink By Malcolm Gladwell Essay

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“Fascinating! Eye-Opening! Important!” David Brooks said it best. Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell was all those things and more. Gladwell did a great job writing this book. It was wonderful. He takes us through many different stories to explain how we think. He shows us what snap judgments are, and how and when to use them. He educates us on how we think, and it’s enlightening.
He starts off the book with a story of a statue, more specifically a kouros. A man walks into Getty Museum in California to sell a $10 million, seven feet tall, mesmerizing kouros. The Getty Museum showed interested and started to look into the piece to make sure it was genuine. After fourteen long months of studying, analyzing, and collaborating on this piece, they finally decided that
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Brooks is wrong when he seems to be upset with his unanswered questions. He writes “Gladwell never tells us how the brain performs these amazing cognitive features.” He also writes “If you want to trust my more reflective second judgment, buy it: you’ll be delighted but frustrated, troubled and left wanting more.” I disagree with Brooks on this. Blink is more about telling us about the first two seconds. Gladwell isn’t writing about neuroscience and what the neurons, photons, electrochemical signals, and the brainstem. Gladwell is telling us about our mind and how to us it more efficiently. Gladwell would have ruined the book if he started to talk more about the brain and the functions of each part. He is more focused on feelings and decision making, not the brain chemistry. Anyone who wants to learn about their unconscious mind, when you should use it, or just to be entertained with many different stories and experiment then this book is for

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