Blink!
Malcolm Gladwell is my favorite non-fiction writer. He is most know for his book The Tipping Point, which has become must read for anyone in business. But he is much more than just that one work. He writes wonderfully thoughtful articles for The New Yorker. Most of which can be found on his personal web site. My personal favorite is his article on physical genius.
Malcolm’s critics (and there are only a few) point out the fact that many times he is pointing out information that isn’t new. This is a fair assessment, but they miss one point. What Malcolm does as well as anyone (and better than most) is to synthesize many different pieces of research in to one thought and then explain it in an easy to understand framework.
His most recent work, Blink [info | buy], is no different. It is a wonderful book which explores the decisions we make in a slip second, in a blink. If for no other reason, it is a must read for the fourth chapter. In it he discusses the biases we have built in. What I found most fascinating was the way a bias towards a race or gender could be slowly turned by consistently holding up positive role models.