Anyone who watches the television news has seen images of firefighters rescuing people from burning buildings & paramedics treating bombing victims. How do these individuals make the split-second decisions that save lives? Most studies of decision making based on artificial tasks assigned in laboratory settings view people as biased & unskilled. Gary Klein is one of the developers of the naturalistic decision making approach which views people as inherently skilled & experienced. It documents human strengths & capabilities that so far have been downplayed or ignored. Since 1985 Klein has conducted fieldwork to find out how people tackle challenges in difficult nonroutine situations. Sources of Power is based on observations of humans acting under such real-life constraints as time pressure high stakes personal responsibility & shifting conditions. The professionals studied include firefighters critical care nurses pilots nuclear power plant operators battle planners & chess masters. Each chapter builds on key incidents & examples to make the description of the methodology & phenomena more vivid. In addition to providing information that can be used by professionals in management psychology engineering & other fields the book presents an overview of the research approach of naturalistic decision making & expands our knowledge of the strengths people bring to difficult tasks.