Talking to Strangers

To say I “enjoyed” this book would be slightly incorrect. I appreciate the perspective it gave and the overall premise of the book. However, there were many times I found myself uncomfortable or angry about the stories as they were described. I believe that may have been the point but this was not always a pleasant read.

[a:Malcolm Gladwell 19407610 Malcolm Gladwell Gladwell https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] is one of the world's most successful non-fiction authors. Gladwell was the creator of smash hits such as [b:The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference 2612 The Tipping Point How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference Malcolm Gladwell https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1473396980l/2612.SY75.jpg 2124255] and [b:Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking 40102 Blink The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Malcolm Gladwell https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440763417l/40102.SX50.jpg 1180927]. In this, his sixth book he examines interactions with strangers. Specifically, he explores a problem which he says lies at the heart of many societal ills. This is: why are we so bad at understanding people we don't know? Why is it so hard to judge a stranger's motives?Gladwell takes a series of well-known, and more obscure, case studies. He covers examples that includes the:- deceptions of Bernie Madoff,- fact that Neville Chamberlain met Hitler and judged him to be a man of his word,- trial of Amanda Knox- suicide of Sylvia Plath,- Jerry Sandusky pedophilia case at Penn State, and- death of Sandra Bland.These he uses to challenge the assumptions we are programmed to make when encountering strangers. And the sometimes dangerous consequences of misreading people we don't know.Gladwell argues that three common problems tend to derail our interactions with strangers:- we default to truth In other words, we assume that people are honest;- others are transparent when in fact they're not; and- we fail to take into account the differing contexts in which people operate.It's classic Gladwell: he spins a basic idea out through a series of well told stores. Then his mixes this with the work of carefully chosen academics.But I couldn't help feeling a little underwhelmed. So people aren't always transparent to each other? Amazing. Gladwell's job, it seems, is to be puzzled by banalities. Then he replaces them, after lots of pseudo-intellectual digressions, with blindingly obvious insights.But I have to acknowledge that Gladwell is a good writer. His stories are well selected and while we may not always agree with him, his books are diverting and thought provoking (up to a point).

This book was.....not AT ALL about what I expected it to be about, but being a Malcolm Gladwell joint it was still quite fascinating.

Somewhat horrifying into about how inept the CIA is here in the US...along with some interesting analysis about some of the major headline grabbing assault cases of the past decade.

If you like Gladwell, you'll like this.

He is definitely an amazing story teller.
Very interesting, detailed, captivating real life stories. And sensitive topics.

That said, for some reason, I never got his message: We don't know how to talk to strangers, we can be easily deceived because we default to truth, drinking cloud our judgement (and ok to rape an unconscious woman??), sexual abuse cases are complicated hence we can't hold higher ups responsible?? Not sure ..
It definitely didn't leave a good taste in my mouth.

Key takeaways:

- People are difficult to read
- Do not assume you fully understand someone
- Recognize that meeting someone face-to-face does not necessarily mean you understand them better

Un libro fascinante sobre lo complicada que es la comunicacion humana.
Como sabes que lo que tu entiendes que dices es lo mismo que lo que la otra persona entiendes que dices?
Como puedes detectar si alguien miente? Etc.

Muchas ideas interesantes, un gran libro para escuchar.

Интересная книга о том, что люди часто не такие, какими мы ожидаем их видеть. Я бы сократил ее процентов на 20, но не потому что там вода, а потому что лишние детали. Особенно угнетают диалоги как в пьесах по ролям. Думаю, это все нужно, чтобы подчеркнуть серьезность исследований темы.

В каждой главе рассматриваются какие-то истории, где автор пытается разобраться почему так произошло. Там и шпионы, и самоубийцы, и педофилы и полицейские — полный набор.

Обложка так себе, я бы по обложке не купил. Короче, если хотите реже ошибаться в людях — почитайте или послушайте книгу.

Having never read a book by Gladwell previously, I enjoyed this more than I thought it would. I struggled through Sapiens and thought I would with this book as well because of it's non-fiction nature. For the most part I enjoyed the book, but sometimes Gladwell can go on tangents only somewhat related to the topic. Still, I had some good takeaways from reading Talking to Strangers.

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.

The book is well written and the theories presented are very interesting, however, the connections between them at times seem a bit far-fatched.

Great storytelling, an interesting conclusion, but really the thesis is more based on wishful thinking than some real analysis. The author, as in most of his books, comes up with an assumption and gives a plethora of examples to prove it. With good arguments, but mostly shown one-sided only. Also, some stories involve some very graphic cases.
As for the storytelling itself - the book is a good read because of how well the stories are being told. It's, by far, the strongest part of this book.

I'm more than a little gobsmacked by this one.

When did Malcolm Gladwell get red-pilled into a right wing apologist? Or is it just after countless bestselling books and a lucrative podcast empire he thought he'd just go for it with this Fox News ready hot-take?

I mean it starts with Sandra Bland, pulled over in Texas, arrested, jailed and found dead by suicide in her cell three days later. In a book called Talking to Strangers about our inability to properly communicate with people we don't know, this seems a narrow view of the whole interaction. It's like the conversational equivalent of “you shouldn't have worn that dress.”

Let's ignore the fact Bland was jailed 3 days for a failed lane signal. That Starbucks baristas have better de-escalation skills than the arresting officer who was, let's not forget, indicted for perjury. This reads like yet another story of “driving while Black” not one of crossed wires and an incomplete transfer of information.

But then Gladwell decides to weigh in on the case of campus rapist Brock Turner.

Brock Turner of course is the former Stanford University swim star, son of a civilian contractor for the United States Air Force who was charged for “20 minutes of action” and served 3 months of a six month sentence after Judge Aaaron Perskey (a Stanford Alumnus himself) felt that prison would have a severe impact on him.

And here comes Gladwell using this, of all incidents, to put forward the notion that sexual assault is a failure to agree on the rules of consent because alcohol causes mental myopia. That Brock Turner simply was ill-equipped to know what he was doing when we was raping an unconscious woman, neglecting the fact he still somehow had enough of a self-preservation instinct to try and run away when he was discovered.

That we're to minimize this is a crime of violence where individuals exert their power and control over another individual sexually and instead speak of it as miscommunication - to shifting the blame to the victim for their failure to communicate clearly is a hard fucking no. And it's not just reprehensible on the page, it has real world ramifications. In fact, just this year the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that it isn't rape to have sex with an unconscious woman if she's gotten drunk voluntarily. What.The.Fuck.

And there the book goes from being willfully dumb, narrowly focused, and cherry picking whatever helps the preexisting argument to downright dangerous. I've just read a 300 page opinion piece from a Conservative rag with all the hard-hitting, well-researched rigour of an online anti-vaxxer. Hard pass.

The majority of this book is a series of somewhat interesting pop psych anecdotes, with almost no connection to an overall theme. I'm not sure how the actual book was written, but the audiobook is produced like a bad podcast, full of hints of what's coming up as though it was a series or something, which was frustrating and off-putting.

There was one section in the middle about the Brock Turner case that really turned me off where he was just short of victim blaming. It really changed how I looked at the rest of the book, and I can't recommend it.

I listened to the audio book version of this and it was definitely worth the listen. The author does a great job of immersing the listener into each situation and demonstrating how taking to strangers is easy yet challenging at the same time.

I struggled to connect with where the book was going at the start so as a result I put it away for a while. Then when I picked it up today I immediately caught on and read it through. I was captivated the whole way. As always Malcolm Gladwell's analysis is always captivating and really thought provoking, whether you agree with it or not. It not only changed the way I view my interactions and perspectives about strangers but also made me reflect on my own personal biases. I'll definitely carry these ideas with me and think about them more. At the end, I really enjoyed this book

Meh.

It was fun reading this in his voice...like reading the script to revisionist history

Despite the obvious correlations not causations fallacy, I thought the stories and the gimmicks in Gladwell's books make for an easy yet interesting read. But this book set such horrible precedent in the introduction itself where he is kinda defending Brock Turner. I stopped reading at that point and looked up interviews or articles about this. There's well deserved backlash and criticism out there.

Someone recommended this as an audiobook because of the way interviews and transcripts are included as audio (some are recreations) which is neat! But it opens with the recording from the Sandra Bland traffic stop, which is incredibly stressful and potentially triggering. There are a couple other content-warning worthy inclusions, the US gymnastics doctor, the football coach, and the Brock Turner rape which are hard to listen to.

Otherwise, there are a number of interesting investigations into why we are bad at catching people lying, different types of policing, where our expectations for “appropriate” reactions to stressful situations may lead us astray.

A lot of good material, well presented, but what an unsatisfying ending. I got the feeling that Gladwell has let his (excellent) podcasting skills bleed into his writing: “Setup setup setup. Rhetorical questions? Pithy one-liner–in its own paragraph. Repeat.” It mostly worked, possibly because the book is short, but was grating at times and I think it diminished his impact somewhat.The material, as I said, is very good: on how bad humans are at detecting lies, and he takes that into intriguing directions, zigging and zagging along seeming tangents but it's always clear where he's going – he's developing a case, showing us the building blocks and letting us put them together. It's just that, at the end, it feels like a (sorry) cop-out. He takes on the brutal U.S. police system but basically just ends on a tut-tut note. (Admittedly, this was published in 2019, and the social conversation has taken a new tone since then). I was also disappointed that he doesn't even touch on the links between gullibility and religion. (Then again, that would've hurt sales).Three point something stars. I tried really hard to round up to four, flipping through it over and over, rereading choice parts, skimming gestalt of particular sections, but I can't justify the bump. Please don't let that discourage you from reading it: I still recommend it. It was informative and entertaining and thought-provoking. Just... ultimately unsatisfying.Biggest takeaway: I want to read Timothy Levine's [b:Duped 46168432 Duped Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception Timothy R. Levine https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1560072441l/46168432.SX50.jpg 71125637].

Very good, but my gosh do I wish there were content warnings! The audio book version of this with recordings of the actual people being talked about was horrifying!

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.

Life is not an episode of Friends... really?

A good example of the parts being better than the whole.

Some interesting parts; the concept of alcohol myopia, the depth and stupidity of the systemic issues with police stops, the physical reasons torture doesn't work. He tried to tie it all together but it didn't hold up.

It's always suspicious when the author continues to use the title of the book all the time to make it clear how this all relates together.

Some content warning: This book goes to describe sexual assault, pedophilia, police brutality, and suicide. If you are sensitive to these matters then probably skip this book.

What I liked about the audiobook is that it kept quotes or videos and played them instead of describing them. Any court cases things were usually reenacted.

I'm not sure what to think about this book. It captivated me enough to finish it and some made good points about the gaps of talking with strangers, the studies were good and really gave me insight.



What has left a poor taste was that he picked the most sensitive topics to talk about and seemed to apologize for the abusers? Or at least that's what I thought on several occasions... I think this book was trying to use them as examples and break down what may have happened by a miscommunication that can lead to catastrophic events and that doesn't dig deep enough. For example rape culture, police brutality, not trusting victims of sexual assault at any age, and system failures seem glossed over to me.

You'll have to read this for yourself to be the best judge. What you focus on is what I think you will get the most out of it.