【推荐2】Galdwell’s book, Blink, is all about first impressions and what he calls “rapid cognition（认知）”. In his own words, “It’s a book about the kind of thinking that happens in a short time. When you meet someone for the first time or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions.”

Galdwell points out that most scientific tradition is based on a great deal more than two seconds’ thought though years of scientific study can come from a quick observation. As for rapid cognition, Gladwell realizes some first impressions don’t seem to be based on anything. He noticed that Americans support taller candidates（候选人）. In fact, since 1900, only four candidates have beaten men who are taller than themselves. With this in mind Gladwell got in touch with 500 companies in the US and found that almost all of their managers were tall. Gladwell said, “That’s weird. There is no connection between height and intelligence or height and decision-making…But for some reason companies chose tall people for leadership roles. I think that’s an example of bad rapid cognition.”

As an example of good rapid cognition, he tells the story of the Emergency Room doctors at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. A few yeas ago, the hospital changed the way they diagnosed（诊断）heart attacks. Their doctors took no notice of the patient’s age, weight and medical history and gave most of their attention to a few really important pieces of information, such as blood pressure and heart rate. And what happened? Cook County is now one of the best places in the United States for diagnosing chest pain.

Gladwell believes the power of first impressions should be studied further. “The first task of Blink is to show the fact: decisions made very quickly can be as good as decisions made slowly and carefully.”

【推荐3】Want to know about the biggest page-turners in 2020 for your kids before you buy? Check out our list of New York Times best-selling chapter books

A Tale of Magic age 12+ ★★★★☆ Imaginative, lively tale. Chris Colfer|Fantasy|2019	Brystal Evergreen lives in a country where women are forbidden to read. She is a bookworm, trying to find creative ways of getting books. One day Brystal uncovers a secret area of the library and finds a book about magic that changes her life forever…
A Wolf Called Wander age 14+ ★★★★★ Exciting & vivid autobiography of a wolf. Rosanne Parry|Animals|2019	Swift,   a young wolf cub（幼崽）,   lived with his pack in the mountains learning to hunt when they were attacked,   and Swift got separated from his family. Alone and scared. Swift must escape and find a new home…
The Field Guide to the North American Teenager age 15+ ★★★★★ A funny story of an immigrant teen facing culture shock in U. S. Ben Philippe|Coming of Age|2020	Norris, a 14-year-old Black French Canadian, arrives in Texas, where his mother gets a teaching job at a university. Though lacking knowledge about U. S. high school life, he tries hard to build a new life…

【推荐1】On my granddaughter Mary’   s 21st birthday，I sat with her and her expired (过期的)driver’   s license on a hard wooden bench at the DMV (the Department of Motor Vehicles)，waiting for our number to be called. The broadcast system announced numbers to call ticket holders to reach the desk to take an eye test or renew a registration. I felt as though we were staying at a bingo game，waiting for the winning number to be called so we could jump up and collect the prize.

And on that bench，I had a thought:The seemingly ordinary events I’   ve shared with my granddaughter were both my adventures and my rewards for just showing up. I grew up in an immigrant (移民)family in the suburb of Boston. A vacation for us was a bus trip to Central Square，with shopping bags filled with delicious foods like hard boiled eggs，followed by the muddy sand sucking our toes.

I looked forward to these small outings. It sounded boring to seek out the simple pleasures，but it was not. I traveled to remote islands，to Europe，and to many of America’   s cities. Those trips were refreshing，but they were breaks. I prefer the mainstream of the ordinary.

I like the day trips. But the most wonderful time was when Mary and I stayed in the reading room. We talked about her homework，and played the roles of two thinkers discussing the Enlightenment (启蒙运动). We had our private book club，reading A Prayer for Owen Meany and copying the voice of the main character.

All of these ordinary moments are more valuable than the time it will take to travel around the world. Many people love adventures，like skydiving or climbing Mount Everest. But that is not who I am. I don’t need those adventure experiences. In the end，it turns out that just showing up is enough for me.

【推荐2】Landscapes are not only the setting for history; they are also a major source of our sense of history and identity.Read them right, and historical landscapes can be more informative than any other kind of source.This is even more the case with sacred landscapes, which were reflection of our ancestors’ beliefs about their relation to the cosmos and can still today seem to hold a spiritual influence.

Over the years, I’ve had the good fortune to have spent time in many historical landscapes, hoping to picture something of the spirits of the people who shaped them over the centuries.I still remember years ago walking along the Inca sacred lines around Cusco, Peru. In this ancient landscape, old sites that once belonged to Incan royals had become torn Spanish mansions. Or many years ago, before the Gulf Wars, I took a journey through south Iraq, the heart land of civilization, where the desert is still crossed by dried-up riverbeds of the Euphrates and canals that once sustained the world’s first cities.

Britain also has its own magical ancient landscapes. From the Mesolithic to the Bronze and Iron Ages, rich layers of the past are still present in the landscape surrounding Stonehenge, even as traffic rushes down the A303. It is the A303 that is the problem. As the main road to the south west from the home counties, the road runs right past Stonehenge. One of humanity’s most famous monuments, Stonehenge is an archaeological landscape without parallel in Europe, and perhaps the world. The first circle at Stonehenge was made 5,000 years ago, and the great stone circle itself in a round 2,500 BC—the age of the pyramids! And the mysteries of this amazing monument and the complex prehistoric societies that produced it are by no means exhausted, as new discoveries continue to show.

All the more worrying to me then, this unique landscape is currently at the centre of a projected plan by Highways England, which aims to relieve congestion on the A303 by creating a four-lane road with a 1.8-mile tunnel, and an expressway interchange 1.5 miles to the west. While the National Trust and English Heritage have offered qualified support for the plan, UNESCO has expressed its opposition. Meanwhile, the Stonehenge Alliance, a group of archaeologists and environmental campaigners, says the plan is based on inadequate and obsolete information. In the end, the argument is about the totality of an ancient landscape, and that includes the ancient astronomical alignment that was purposefully chosen by our ancestors, and that will, in my view, be wrecked by the expressway interchange. Time perhaps for a rethink in the name of future generations?

【推荐3】Working in undergraduate admissions at Dartmouth College has introduced me to many talented young people through their college applications. The problem is that many remarkable students become indistinguishable from one another, at least on paper. It is incredibly difficult to choose whom to admit.

The greatest surprise I’ve ever come across in my admissions career came from a student who went to a large public school in New England. He was clearly bright, as evidenced by his class rank and teachers’ praise. He had a supportive recommendation from his college headmaster and an impressive list of extracurriculars. Even with these qualifications, he might not have stood out. But one letter of recommendation caught my eye. It was from a school doorkeeper.

This letter was different. The doorkeeper wrote that he felt it necessary to support this student because of his thoughtfulness. This young man was the only person in the school who knew the names of every member of the cleaning staff. He turned off lights in empty rooms, consistently thanked the hallway monitor each morning and tidied up after his peers even if nobody was watching. This student, the doorkeeper wrote, had a refreshing respect for every person at the school, regardless of position, popularity or influence.

Over 15 years and 30,000 applications in my admissions career, I had never seen a recommendation from a school doorkeeper. It gave us a new lens into a student’s life in the moments when nothing “counted.” That student was admitted by a shared vote of the admissions committee.

Next year there might be a flood of doorkeeper recommendations thanks to this essay. But if it means students will start paying as much attention to the people who clean their classrooms as they do to their principals and teachers, I’m happy to help start that trend. But the story shouldn’t stop there.