I buy a lot of books in airports. Usually non-fiction, and usually something I wouldn't normally buy (when for instance browsing through an internet bookshop). On my last trip to Singapore, while stuck in Schipol for 5 hours) I came across Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and bought it on a whim. It was so readable that I missed most of the in-flight movies on the 12 hour flight, and on the return I bought his first book, The Tipping Point.
Both of these are well worth a read, if you have any interest in how your perceptions can be manipulated, and how cultural trends take off.
Blink is a classic of psychology-lite: Gladwell draws on a huge array of psychological, behavioural and marketing studies to present a clear, concise and engagingly written overview of how we make snap judgements, how those judgements can be improved, and how they can be distorted or manipulated (by marketers, for instance). One thing that comes across clearly is that the author is fascinated by this stuff himself, and sufficiently well informed that he makes an excellent guide through the otherwise bewildering territory of the subconscious.
This is a must-read for martial artists, I would say, as one of the most universal problems faced by martial arts is how to make a person's snap-judgements reliable and effective ("I'll attack with this"; or, "is he about to come at me"; or, "is that a gun in his pocket or is he just pleased to see me").
The Tipping Point, Gladwell's previous best-selling work, is likewise fascinating. He has a gift for making complex subjects approachable, and presents a clear set of rules that apparently govern the development of epidemics, be they crime, shoe sales, or syphilis. The Law of the Few (Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen), the Power of Context, and The Stickiness Factor.
In short, this is an unmissable book for anyone interested in how global phenomena take off. Even the maths is presented in an accessible way, usually in endnotes for the curious.
One interesting point is his analysis of the ending of the crime epidemic in New York, which he attributes (at least in part) to Bratton's innovative policing strategies (based on the famous "Broken Windows" theory). In Freakonomics, which I picked up in Arlanda, on the was home from Sweden, Steves Levitt and Dubner apply the tools of economics to real-world phenomena (want to know what your real estate agent is really thinking? Is sumo wrestling rigged? When and why do teachers cheat on school exams? Why did crime rates fall in the 90's?). At one point they refer to the economist who coined the term "the tipping point" and remark that he did so "30 years before Malcolm Gladwell made the term popular". They are also adamant that the innovative policing credited as reducing the crime rate (by Gladwell as noted above, but also by many others) had nothing to do with it: according to their analysis, crime rates were already falling, and the primary reason for it was the legalisation of abortion in the USA in 1973.
I would pay money to sit in a corner and listen to Levitt and Gladwell argue their cases. Whatever the result, and whatever ill-will may or may not exist between these authors, all their books that I have read have been a sound investment in terms of money in for enjoyment out.
Which brings me on to Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (a gift from a friend, no airports involved), who like Gladwell in Blink, takes us through an enormous range of research into how the mind works, and especially how it can be fooled. His aim is apparently to explain why our present selves are so bad at anticipating what will make our future selves happy. The manifold means by which we can be fooled by our own brain are clearly presented, in a very accessible way. The cover includes a quote from Levitt, describing the book as "relentlessly entertaining"; this I agree with, and it is the sole aspect that detracted from at least my second reading, if not the first. Not a paragraph and barely a sentence goes by without some quip, wordplay, joke or witty aside, which, while it makes the book great for dipping into, and no doubt sell well to people who buy on the basis of reading one paragraph in the shop, can get a little wearing when reading for hours at a time. Still, the content is well worth the price of admission.
It would be even more interesting to get Steve, Dan and Malcolm together over drinks, wind them up and let them go.
