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Featured Categories : Society, Politics & Philosophy : Social Sciences : Cultural Studies : General AAS

• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

  Malcolm Gladwell

  
  : For Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, author of the bestselling The Tipping Point explores the extraordinarily perceptive and deceptive power of the sub-conscious mind. Gladwell's major claim is that decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as a decision made cautiously and deliberately. What we are actually doing is what Gladwell calls `thin-slicing'. When we leap to a decision or have a hunch our unconscious is sifting through the situation in front of us looking for a pattern, throwing out the irrelevant information and zeroing in on what really matters. Our unconscious mind is so good at this that it often delivers a better answer than more deliberate and protracted ways of thinking. Much of this is utterly mysterious but some of the most astonishing and useful examples of thin-slicing can be learned.

   

  Gladwell hopes to convince us that our snap judgements and first impressions can be educated and controlled so instead of merely praising the mysterious process of instinct and intuition he is interested in those moments when our instincts betray us, the situations where our powers of rapid cognition can go awry, where we fail to read the signs. Most disturbing of all is the degree to which culturally determined preconceptions and prejudices control us. Without reducing matters to racism and sexism Gladwell shows us that there are facts about people's appearance—their size or shape or color or sex—that can trigger a very similar set of powerful associations which explains why utter mediocrities (such as U.S. President Warren Harding) can sometimes end up in positions of enormous responsibility; or why tall people earn substantially more than their shorter colleagues; or why car salesmen unconsciously charge prices according to race and gender.

   

  Gladwell's conversational prose style is concise, informative, accessible and entertaining. The stories, scientific findings and psychological tests are consistently surprising whether he is dealing with speed-dating, record promotions, police shoot-outs, the human face, or the reasons doctors get sued. --Larry Brown END

  
   

• Wall and Piece

  "Banksy"

  
  
   

• Belching Out the Devil: Global Adventures with Coca-Cola

  Mark Thomas

  
  
   

• Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (Beginnings)

  Peter Barry

  
  
   

• Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (Vintage classics)

  Roland Barthes

  
  
   

• Seven Days in the Art World

  Sarah Thornton

  
  
   

• Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (Penguin Modern Classics)

  Edward W. Said

  
  
   

• Wall and Piece

  Banksy

  
  
   

• Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth

  Margaret Atwood

  
  
   

• Mythologies (Vintage classics)

  Roland Barthes

  
  
   

• Mythologies (Vintage classics)

  Roland Barthes

  
  
   

• Here Comes Everybody

  Clay Shirky

  
  
   

• Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture

  Marita Sturken, Lisa Cartwright

  
  
   

• Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What it Says About Us): Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)

  Tom Vanderbilt

  
  
   

• The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge v. 1

  Michel Foucault

  
  
   

• Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology (Anthropology, Culture and Society)

  Thomas Hylland Eriksen

  
  
   

• Not on the Label: What Really Goes into the Food on Your Plate

  Felicity Lawrence

  
  
   

• Eating for England: The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at Table

  Nigel Slater

  
  How long does it take before somebody becomes a national treasure? It's certainly happened to Nigel Slater, and Eating for England is a highly enjoyable reminder of just why we esteem the estimable Mr Slater. Subtitled The Delights & Eccentricities of the British at Table, this is wonderfully entertaining stuff, explaining such matters as how some of our most cherished foods are the result of frugality (bread and butter pudding, for instance, is the direct result of utilising a few slices of leftover bread and a pat of butter, rather than culinary aspiration). As Slater points out, the British have a relationship with food which is quite unlike that of any other nation -- for many years, we were reluctant to discuss food matters (leaving culinary discussion to, for instance, the French), but we now appear to be in the grip of a national food obsession, with program after program on television and -- inevitably -- a host of books on the subject. But few are written as entertainingly as Nigel Slater's. It isn't just the discussion of food itself (from haute cuisine to the humblest of comfort foods) that's so diverting here, but other sociological (and tongue-in-cheek) related matters, such as `A Teenager at the Table' (`The shoulders droop, the head hangs sulkily down, eyes glaring intently at an invisible spot on their lap. Their whole body seems to say `I'm not eating this'). And Nigel Slater is perfectly happy to address subjects not found in any other food books (such as the modest chocolate bar -- different varieties are entertainingly compared and contrasted).

  This is a personal portrait of the British and their food, filled with love of the eccentricities and peculiarities that encapsulate the national character. And it's great fun. --Barry Forshaw

  
   

• Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

  Henry Jenkins

  
  
   

• A Field Guide to the British

  Sarah Lyall