You have no doubt already seen the video.  A bunch of college students, half in white and half in black, is passing a bunch of basketballs in some kind of parking garage-looking place.  Your goal is to count how many times the white team passes the ball.

If you haven't taken this test, then you really should before you read this book.  I won't spoil it for you (the way it was spoiled for me before I could even take it).  You can watch the video and take the test here on the authors' website.

Chabris and Simons are the cognitive psychologists who made that video, and invented that test.

The Invisible Gorilla is all about how our perceptions are so often wrong.  It is implicitly - and occasionally explicitly - a referendum on Malcolm Gladwell's recent book Blink, which has exactly the opposite thesis. 

Dueling pop psychology books!  Pistols at dawn!

I actually think that The Invisible Gorilla has a lot more to do with Richard Wiseman's article about lucky people.  Wiseman (who recently published the book "59 Seconds")  Wiseman's thesis was that lucky people are actually just less inclined to suffer from this kind of mental tunnel vision, which is often brought about by the stressed and hypervigilant behavior of people who feel themselves to be unlucky.  Lucky people, relaxed and confident, were simply more likely to notice and take advantage of things in their environment.

Some of these concepts were also covered in "Built To Stick," which is interesting, because that's considered a marketing book.  Nevertheless, it's where I first heard about concepts like the "expert attribution error," when someone who is an expert in one field assumes they are an expert in all fields.  I'm sure everyone knows at least one person who does this.

Chabris and Simons spend the book diving in depth into the ways our own minds and intuitions can deceive us.  I'm fascinated by this kind of thing, and I spend a lot of time reading about this stuff, which means that most of what I found in the book was stuff I already knew.  That doesn't mean it's a bad book, and if you are new to the field, then this is a great choice.  Just saying, I skimmed a lot of the book.

One thing that made me smile was the final chapter, titled "Get Smart Quick!"  A lot of fuss has been made lately about keeping your brain flexible, the value of Sudoku and crossword puzzles, the DS game "Brain Age," and more. 

However, it turns out that the best way to make cognitive gains is through aerobic exercise.  This is something I have heard repeatedly from different sources, and it seems so counter-intuitive, but that doesn't make it less true. 

I definitely believe that books like this can make you smarter, or at least better informed.  So maybe the best option is to double down: get the audiobook version, and listen to it while you take a brisk walk or jog!