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Talking to Strangers
Talking to Strangers

Talking to Strangers

By
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell
By
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell
2019 • 304 pages

Ratings66

Average rating3.7

15
Book InfoReviews7Editions6Lists34Feed5

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and #1 bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, and What the Dog Saw, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers---and why they often go wrong. How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland---throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.


Reviews

Popular Reviews

Reviews with the most likes.

colingooding
Colin Gooding

I've been listening to podcasts and other things instead of reading lately, so I thought this audiobook would be a good transition back, it's produced like an episode of Gladwell's podcast.

I like Gladwell's ability to find interesting stories/people and draw broad conclusions from them. He generally stays on a topic just long enough for it to remain interesting before moving on to a tangentially related but fairly different one.

I enjoyed this book, but it didn't interest me as much as some of his other's. Concepts such defaulting to truth or mismatched presentation were well explained, but I didn't think the conclusions that were reached from some of the stories told about them were as thought provoking as I hoped they would be.

October 1, 2020
d_bessette
Danielle

This has the same Gladwellian tempo and somewhat tenuous conclusions as his other books; but as always, fantastic writing and superb storytelling, many showing different sides to quondam media controversies that are always interesting to consider, albeit with a critical eye.

January 20, 2020
willhui
Will

I recommend the audiobook version of this book on Audible. It is the most unique audiobook I have experienced to date.

Talking to Strangers has an interesting thesis, using a combination of data and high-profile historical and media events in order to explain why strangers so often misunderstand each other. I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced of everything in the book, but Gladwell definitely knows how to weave a captivating narrative.

February 1, 2020
Mandler
Chandler

Great story-telling, great audio production, but very little in actual analysis or advice. Gladwell's main points are that we don't know people as well as we think we do. Our natural instinct is to trust that people are being truthful, yet that can get us into trouble.

While I wasn't aware of the details of many of the discussed stories, that wasn't why I was reading the book. I wanted more social science, and less entertaining stories about the atrocities of our day... as I see them already. It is very apparent that we are not good at determining whether or not strangers are who they say they are. From the small, everyday misunderstandings or betrayals to the large and terrifying ones, it is obvious that people are different and do not think the same. This book offers few points of actual advice or solution. These stories are important to hear and understand, but I don't know if this is the right book in which to tell them.

Listened to the audiobook. Definitely felt like a podcast. Good quality.

September 26, 2021

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