Malcolm Gladwell has a new book coming out in January 2005. Excerpts are available now.

"Blink" is a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, "Blink" is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.

Lots of people are committed to the idea that more information is always better. But I describe lots of cases in "Blink" where that simply isn't true.

"Blink" is concerned with the smallest components of our everyday lives -- with the content and origin of those instantaneous impressions and conclusions that bubble up whenever we meet a new person, or confront a complex situation, or have to make a decision under conditions of stress.