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This book suffers from numerous problems. The first is that while it claims to be about "the power of thinking without thinking," this is only one of three ideas that are discussed. The failure to mention the other ideas in the title might have been acceptable if they were mentioned explicitly in the text, but it is unclear that Gladwell realizes the distinction. The second problem is that the book is made up of six distinct essays, and they have been sloppily edited to produce a book that is simultaneously disjoint and repetitive. Though perhaps the second problem is really just a symptom of the third problem, that Gladwell's style is painfully repetitive to begin with. Gladwell does not simply beat dead horses, he beats the dust into which he has reduced their carcasses. The fourth problem is that towards the end of the book Gladwell goes off on a tangent about "situational autism" that is both poorly motivated and very likely to offend the autistic community. And finally, rather than having an introduction and conclusion that tie the book together, these sections present whole new situations; the conclusion in particular seems largely unrelated to the rest of the book. The book has four points. First, is that the human mind has an impressive ability to process information at an unconscious level very quickly. For instance, by listening to a brief snippet of a doctor speaking, even if the recording is digitally altered so that all you can hear is the tone, you can very accurately determine whether the doctor has good bedside manner. Similarly, by watching a few seconds of a college professor's lecture, even with the sound turned off, you can make a remarkably accurate determination of whether the professor is a good lecturer. The second point is that this ability often leads us astray. Our unconscious can be shown to harbor prejudices against blacks, women, and others, and these prejudices are bad for both us and society. And on a less socially relevant note, people consistently prefer the taste of liquor that comes in fancy bottles. The book gives absolutely no advice about how to improve our unconscious's attitudes towards either minorities or conventional packaging of foodstuffs. Without explicitly mentioning it, the book points out the importance of making decisions based on relevant information, rather than large quantities of irrelevant data. The best example of this is given in the introduction. An apparently ancient Greek statue is analyzed with all sorts of fancy chemistry equipment, and the lab technicians come back and say that the marble is indeed from an ancient Greek quarry and that the surface of the marble has a chemical composition that is usually the result of centuries of weathering. On the other hand, any art historian worth his salt can tell you that the feet of the statue are carved in a style never seen in any other Greek statue. While the information from the chemists seems more concrete (their equipment costs more), the relevant fact here is the style of carving in the feet-the statue is a modern forgery. Finally, the book talks about ways to improve decision making under intense time pressure, for instance in a military engagement or police shootout. The conclusion, not surprisingly, is that practice making split-second decisions is important. Also, if you can slow down the pace of the engagement in order to allow yourself more time, you should do so, but if slowing down gives your opponents a greater advantage, you shouldn't. If you have made it through this review, there is certainly no need to read the book. Every idea Gladwell had has been summarized and clarified here. Which should really make you wonder how he stretched the book past 20 pages, let alone 200!