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Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know

Malcolm Gladwell

4.05 · Rating details · 51,344 ratings · 5,701 reviews

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, 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 ...more

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Hardcover, 388 pages

Published September 10th 2019 by Little, Brown and Company

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Sep 01, 2019 Emily May rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, 2019

I was trying to work through my thoughts on this book when Goodreads did an interview with Malcolm Gladwell and this one thing he said just made everything clear for me:

“I've never been a writer who's looked to persuade his readers; I'm more interested in capturing their interest and curiosity.”

Because, truthfully, I don't know that Gladwell did fully convince me of his way of thinking with this book. I don't know that I actually agree that he can draw a link between the police officer “ ...more

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Jun 02, 2019 Mimi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: have-a-copy, life-learnings, i-own, non-fiction, diversity-inclusion-belonging

As I sat at the airport, head deep in a book, I suddenly heard, "Hi!" What? To my left stood a handsome man. "I just thought I should say hi since I see you're reading Talking to Strangers."

I too thought Malcolm Gladwell's new book was going to teach me how to literally talk with people I don't know, but as always he turns all my assumptions on their head with this book. If that's what the book was about, that stranger and I might be on a date by now.

If I can convince you of one thing in this As I sat at the airport, head deep in a book, I suddenly heard, "Hi!" What? To my left stood a handsome man. "I just thought I should say hi since I see you're reading Talking to Strangers."

I too thought Malcolm Gladwell's new book was going to teach me how to literally talk with people I don't know, but as always he turns all my assumptions on their head with this book. If that's what the book was about, that stranger and I might be on a date by now.

If I can convince you of one thing in this book, let it be this: Strangers are not easy... We think we can easily see into the hearts of others based on the flimsiest of clues.

At the 2019 book conference BookExpo America, Malcolm pointed out that the problems exemplified by the death of Sandra Bland, a black woman arrested by a white policeman, are everywhere, not just in the darkest areas of America. It lies not only with these individuals but within each of us.

In his book, he takes huge scandals (and who doesn't love to read about a scandal?), reaches deep inside like you would your skinniest jeans and then pulls them inside out. Except that when he does this, you suddenly realize your jeans had actually been inside out before. It is mind bending, which means that you have to follow along to at least page 54 before you start to understand where Malcolm is going. You will either find this too convoluted to keep going at some point or you will read it all in one sitting, as I did flying from NY to CA. My one frustration with this book is that at the very end Malcolm spends only 2 pages (2!) saying what we should do about all he just taught us. After speeding through the book, that feels like an abrupt stop. On the other hand, I can't stop thinking about what he reveals along the way. I can't unsee what he has shown me and now my framework of looking at the world is different. And isn't that the mission of any good book?

SPOILER ALERT: For those of you who don't keep reading the book, here are my key insights. But to really understand what Malcolm argues happened in cases like Fidel Castro's fooling of the CIA, the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal, and the death of Sandra Bland you need to read the whole book.

1. THE DEFAULT TO TRUTH PROBLEM We do not behave, in other words, like sober-minded scientists, slowing gathering evidence of the truth or falsity of something before reaching a conclusion. We do the opposite. We start by believing. And we stop believing only when our doubts and misgivings rise to the point where we can no longer explain them away.

For a very few, there is no high threshold before doubts turn into disbelief - dishonesty and stupidity is everywhere. In Russian folklore, this archetype is called yurodivy, the "Holy Fool." We should be strategically inserting these people where our society has a blind eye, to be whistle blowers, however we don't want these to blanket their judgement on everyone. While we think we want our guardians to be alert to every suspicion, that is actually key to where the police officer so tragically failed Sandra Bland. It wasn't that he didn't do what he was trained to do, but that he did exactly what he was trained to do. He was taught to blanket perfectly innocent people with suspicion in case of the rare instance of a criminal. This kind of thinking leads to the distrust we see between police and the community today. To assume the best of another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature is violated are tragic. But the alternative - to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception - is worse.

2. THE TRANSPARENCY PROBLEM Transparency is a myth.

How people are feeling inside often does NOT perfectly match how they appear on the outside, which means we are misjudging other's intentions. This doesn't matter as much with close friends where you understand what their idiosyncratic expressions mean (I had a friend who would often abruptly get up and leave. Other people would think she was very angry at something someone had said, but I saw nothing wrong because I could tell she wasn't angry at all.) When we are confronted with a stranger, we have to substitute an idea - a stereotype - for direct experience. And that stereotype is wrong all too often. However while this strategy for dealing with strangers is deeply flawed, it is also socially necessary. The requirement of humanity means that we have to tolerate an enormous amount of error. That is the paradox of talking to strangers. We need to talk to them. But we're terrible at it... we're not always honest with each other about just how terrible at it we are."

3. THE MISMATCH PROBLEM We are bad lie-detectors in those situations when the person we're judging is mismatched.

A mismatch is where someone's level of truthfulness does NOT correspond with the way they look. I think someone is honest based on how they look and act but in actuality they are lying and I can't tell the difference.

Malcolm dissects the case of Brock Turner, where because these two strangers were blind drunk, myopia removed the highest order constraint on their behavior. Myopia makes it hard to consider the long-term consequences, so a sexually aggressive teenager's impulses are no longer kept in check by an understanding of how inappropriate those behaviors are and the long term risks of those behaviors. Combine that with mismatching and transparency problems and it's a disaster. If you want people to be themselves in a social encounter with a stranger - to represent their own desires honestly and clearly - then they can't be blind drunk.

4. THE COUPLING PHENOMENON The first set of mistakes we make with strangers... have to do with our inability to make sense of the stranger as an individual. But there's a second category of error that has to do with our inability to appreciate the context in which the stranger operates... Coupling is the idea that behaviors are linked to very specific circumstances and conditions.

For instance, both crime and suicides are coupled - tied to very specific places and contexts. Outside of those places and contexts, the rate of both go down drastically. That means when you confront the stranger, you have to ask yourself where and when you're confronting the stranger - because those two things powerfully influence your interpretation of who the stranger is.

SO WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

We could start by no longer penalizing each other for defaulting to truth... We should also accept the limits of our ability to decipher strangers... But far more important than a little grace and humility over what we cannot do, we should be clear about what we can [do]... There are clues to making sense of the stranger. But attending to them requires humility and thoughtfulness and a willingness to look beyond the stranger, and take time and place and context into account.

Malcolm Gladwell was motivated by a need to understand the truth of what happened with Sandra Bland and other recent scandals. His conclusion is that the "truth" ... is not some hard and shiny object that can be extracted if only we dig deep enough and look hard enough. The thing we want to learn about a stranger is fragile (just by stressing someone out you can affect their memory of what happened) ... We need to accept that the search to understand a stranger has real limits. We will never know the whole truth. We have to be satisfied with something short of that. The right way to talk to strangers is with caution and humility.

Because we do not know how to talk to strangers, what do we do when things go awry with strangers? We blame the stranger.

*My honest review was made possible by an Advanced Reader Copy from Book Expo America.* ...more

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Sep 17, 2019 BlackOxford rated it it was ok

Shelves: canadian, sociology

Never Trust a Blood Relative

Talking to Strangers is an elaboration of a simple (trivial?) idea: It’s very difficult to tell when people are lying. According to Timothy Levine, the academic psychologist on whom Gladwell relies for his basic argument, the presumption that people tell the truth is almost universal, a few Holy Fools (and, I suppose, Judge Judy) excepted. Levine calls this his Truth Default Theory. Gladwell applies it entertainingly, if rather repetitively, to cases of duplicity Never Trust a Blood Relative

Talking to Strangers is an elaboration of a simple (trivial?) idea: It’s very difficult to tell when people are lying. According to Timothy Levine, the academic psychologist on whom Gladwell relies for his basic argument, the presumption that people tell the truth is almost universal, a few Holy Fools (and, I suppose, Judge Judy) excepted. Levine calls this his Truth Default Theory. Gladwell applies it entertainingly, if rather repetitively, to cases of duplicity ranging from double agents in government agencies to international financial fraud.

The interesting part of Gladwell’s thesis is that we can’t be trained out of our predisposition to believe what ‘credible’ people, that is, folk who exhibit facial traits and body language which conform to cultural conventions, have to say. Police, judges, regulatory officials, even counter-espionage experts have equally poor records for detecting falsehood compared to the rest of us (it also works the other way round: truth-telling appears as lying if accompanied by ‘mis-matched’ behavioural signals). We are genetically programmed to be dupes (I suspect sex as the evolutionary motive!). And there is no reliable technology that does any better.

The implication for me is that the more anyone is familiar with expected conventional behavioural responses, and can perform these as needed, the more credible they will be. Not a terribly innovative conclusion admittedly, but it does suggest that Gladwell has the wrong end of the authenticity-stick. We may have to worry about strangers being honest; but the real danger is the mendacity of those closest to us, those who know what we find credible, namely intimate family members, not strangers.

There’s another issue as well. It’s clear that most 0f us lie to ourselves from time to time, that is, we conveniently and selectively recall events which confirm our self-rationalising narratives. We cannot observe our own physical behaviour to determine the extent of mismatch. Nor would it make any difference if we could since we may actually believe our own press, as it were. I know academics and business people who act this way as a matter of routine. It’s part of their strategy for success. They speak and write with total conviction about things they really know nothing about. One of these may be the president of the United States. Who knows, perhaps even Gladwell is amongst these experts at self-delusion and is simply scamming the rest of us with complete sincerity.

Or am I merely projecting a sort of cynicism about Gladwell’s slick rapportage? Possibly. But he does seem to have a somewhat murky past as a defender of several dodgy industries like tobacco and pharmaceuticals (See: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...). Presumably he was quite handy at spinning credible publicity out of otherwise damaging facts. “Transparency,” Gladwell says, “is a myth—an idea we’ve picked up from watching too much television and reading too many novels.” One wonders to what degree his book might be an instance of the phenomenon he is describing.

Oh, and as an aside, the attribution of the death of a black student in the custody of a Texas jail to an ‘escalating miscommunication between strangers’ verges on the obscene. His use of this example to book-end his narrative and his references to it as a recurring theme suggest some serious judgmental deficiencies. I don’t feel myself defaulting to truth, or Gladwell’s purported truth, in the least.

Postscript 18Sept19: it appears that Gladwell’s bubble is bursting: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc... ...more

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Oct 26, 2019 Allie rated it did not like it

Shelves: nonfiction, hell-no

TW: detailed descriptions of rape and pedophilia

If it were possible to give a book negative stars, this would be a -10 for me.

Malcolm Gladwell is incredibly influential. From books to podcasts to TED talks, he seems to be everywhere and his story-based approach reaches a large number of people who don't question his credentials as a journalist (with no scientific training) who writes about science. I enjoyed Blink and Outliers despite the often dodgy claims Gladwell makes based on studies that ...more

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Sep 01, 2019 Betsy rated it it was ok

Shelves: netgalley

9/2/2019--I'm knocking this down to two stars. Gladwell's really bad takes on things like race and sexual assault just don't deserve an okay rating.

Wow, does this book ever suffer from a severe case of foot-in-mouth disease!

I almost didn’t make it past the introduction. In my pre-publication copy, Gladwell writes, “The Sandra Bland case came in the middle of a strange interlude in American public life” and then goes on to discuss a series of cases of police violence against black people that ...more

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Sep 16, 2019 Megan rated it did not like it

Shelves: listened-to-audio-book, abuse, psychology, crime, 2019, non-fiction, male-author, race, racism, secrecy

UPDATE 9/23/19
I have now changed this to one star. The more I read about this and other pseudo psych crap he pushes...no no no. The enjoyment of some parts of the book does not outweigh the total garbage of parts of it. Two examples are linked below, with a particularly shocking tidbit from one:

https://deadspin.com/malcolm-gladwell...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc...

The most important part of the first link:
Gladwell: You know I have that chapter on Jerry Sandusky in my book, and it’s all ...more

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Aug 26, 2019 Gretchen Rubin added it · review of another edition

I always feel lucky when I get to read a book before its official publication date. A fascinating, accessible examination of the miscommunications that can arise when we talk to strangers. We're going to interview Malcolm Gladwell for the Happierpodcast, can't wait for that. ...more

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Dec 31, 2019 Elyse Walters rated it really liked it

Audiobook.. narrated by Malcolm Gladwell

Being honest here.... a lot of this book went right over my head. There is so much I don’t know - it’s pathetic & embarrassing.
Also reading this ( listening) during the last few days of the year was challenging my lazy brain.
I knew it would have been helpful to look up information - (visit my buddy, Google), but I was often soaking in our warm pool, or outside walking.
I was a lazy reader/listener with this book....
but thankfully I own it... thanks ...more

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Sep 20, 2019 Leftbanker rated it did not like it

If this had just been stories about spies and the meeting between Hernán Cortés and Montezuma or whatever, I would have rated it five stars. There’s no question that Malcolm Gladwell is a good storyteller, I just wish that he would leave it at that and stop trying to shoe-horn a bunch of tall tales into some sort of coherent statement about the state of the world. I’m not a scientist, but I think that I know science when I see it. I ain’t seeing it here.

“The death of Sandra Bland is what happens ...more

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Sep 21, 2019 Jennifer rated it did not like it

I DNF'd this book after reading too many cringey statements from Gladwell. He wants to categorize a whole range of evils -- from the victimization of unarmed black people (Sandra Bland) to women being raped at colleges parties (Brock Turner) -- as mere "communication" issues between people.

Sure, there might be some element of miscommunication, but it completely misses the point that there are much larger problems and bigger things going on beyond that.

I get that he's trying to cram these I DNF'd this book after reading too many cringey statements from Gladwell. He wants to categorize a whole range of evils -- from the victimization of unarmed black people (Sandra Bland) to women being raped at colleges parties (Brock Turner) -- as mere "communication" issues between people.

Sure, there might be some element of miscommunication, but it completely misses the point that there are much larger problems and bigger things going on beyond that.

I get that he's trying to cram these situations into his premise in order to write this book, but the result is completely tone-deaf and helps to justify crimes and ignorance. Instead of encouraging people to be educated on things the don't understand like consent or why prejudice against black people can lead to excessive force against them, Gladwell chalks it up to "communication" barriers.

To be clear, Gladwell doesn't try to say that Bland was at fault for her death, but rather that the officer didn't properly de-escalate. However, he also takes time to explain why race had nothing to do with the situation. For example, he ignores the mountain of evidence that shows that black people are routinely pulled over more frequently. Instead, Gladwell explicitly states that the officer's decision was not race-motivated. However, he reaches this conclusion based on nothing. His sole support for that statement is the statistic that shows this officer often wrote tickets -- to the tune of 1,557 just that year -- but it's a meaningless number that doesn't prove anything if we don't know if those tickets were evenly or fairly distributed.

There's also the question of whether this book states anything new. The idea that black people are treated exactly the same as everyone else and racism is a myth or that women who drink are partially to blame for being raped are two extremely old arguments. There's nothing new or interesting about it. It's old, tired and not worth anyone's time.

There's also questionable logical leaps that Gladwell makes to put forth his antiquated arguments. Mystifyingly, a survey showing that people have different ideas on what constitutes "consent" leads him to the conclusion that there "are no rules" when it comes to consent. Umm what? So if I took a survey that showed that most people don't know where the Ukraine is located, does that mean the Ukraine has no location or does it mean that people are ignorant? Gladwell's tortured logic for the sake of justifying rape is mind-boggling.

Skip this awful, intellectually vapid book. ...more

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Nov 12, 2019 carol. marked it as don-t-count

Shelves: do-not-be-misled

Not for me, unless I feel like doing a rant-review. Which I'm not ruling out.

Allie's insightful review on excusing those who excused pedophiles: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Leftbanker's thoughtful comments on the Sandra Bland case: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Guardian's review on the obviousness of Gladwell's talking points and race-blind approach: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

Atlantic's review on the lack of thesis: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc...

Best ...more

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Sep 21, 2019 Stephie rated it did not like it

Shelves: psychology, audio-books

Well. I think I’ve gotta jump off the Malcolm Gladwell bandwagon. This book really irritated me.

First of all, with his previous books, the main argument has been very clear. But ‘Talking with Strangers’ is directionless and, at times, confusing. I didn’t even know what he meant by “strangers” as his definition seemed to keep changing. And I found myself wondering what his point was on more than one occasion.

Furthermore, Gladwell has an annoying habit of presenting his opinions or his “research Well. I think I’ve gotta jump off the Malcolm Gladwell bandwagon. This book really irritated me.

First of all, with his previous books, the main argument has been very clear. But ‘Talking with Strangers’ is directionless and, at times, confusing. I didn’t even know what he meant by “strangers” as his definition seemed to keep changing. And I found myself wondering what his point was on more than one occasion.

Furthermore, Gladwell has an annoying habit of presenting his opinions or his “research” (it’s debatable how much of it is actually *his* research) as facts. He is very good at picking and choosing data and statistics and framing them to make whatever point he wants, while ignoring all the other evidence that might disprove his statements. Makes for a good bestseller, I guess. But funny for a book that talks largely about truth and the ‘default-to-truth’ theory. I guess we should just assume that he’s telling us the truth? Maybe the book is a psychological experiment in itself to see how many people buy this bullshit?

He makes some bizarre arguments. He excuses the defenders of paedophiles because of this ‘default-to-truth’ ethos. He seemingly empathises with them, because despite all evidence to the contrary it’s still (according to him) perfectly understandable that we would ignore said evidence because we like to assume that people are telling the truth.

According to Gladwell’s claim in the Brock Turner chapter, that rape was a case of “miscommunication” compounded by alcohol consumption. It verges on victim blaming. Hmmm.

And for the icing on the cake, he attributes the death of Sandra Bland, a young black American woman, again to a “miscommunication between strangers” instead of acknowledging the rather obvious systemic racism that lead to her death.

It just doesn’t sit right with me. I feel that placing the blame on “miscommunication” ignores other very important factors like racism, sexism, corruption and so on. It’s an oversimplification, in my opinion.

Also, I listened to this on Audible, and Gladwell says “Artic” instead of “Arctic”. Wtf. ...more

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Aug 30, 2019 Kelly added it

Shelves: read-in-2019, non-fiction

What I love about Gladwell's books is the thing that I think many people find frustrating: I don't agree with everything he says. But what brings me back is that he finds interesting threads and premises and manages to weave them together in such a way that it makes me think about my own beliefs a little different.

This book begins with the Sandra Bland case. Why did she die? Why did this situation even occur? It then goes into looking at a series of incidents of the CIA overlooking spies from ...more

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Jul 05, 2019 Celeste rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: giveaways

This is certainly a provocative book, enough so that despite my anger and frustration I finished reading it in the hope it would conclude with a complex and thoughtful analysis of why our differences and history result in so much misunderstanding when strangers interact with each other.

Sadly my expectations were not realized. The real life examples that he used were not truly examined in depth and the lack of complexity often left me frustrated. I may just be unable to feel any sympathy for a ...more

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Jul 13, 2019 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-psychology

I'm glad that those nice people at Goodreads chose me randomly to receive an old-school paper copy of this book, free of charge. It will be a novel feeling to actually have read a controversial book before it hits the shelves and generates the predictably shallow hot takes in the few moments before the world's attention moves onto something else.

Perhaps I'm engaging in a display of unwarranted optimism to think that a mere book can have an effect on the way people think, but this is what Talking I'm glad that those nice people at Goodreads chose me randomly to receive an old-school paper copy of this book, free of charge. It will be a novel feeling to actually have read a controversial book before it hits the shelves and generates the predictably shallow hot takes in the few moments before the world's attention moves onto something else.

Perhaps I'm engaging in a display of unwarranted optimism to think that a mere book can have an effect on the way people think, but this is what Talking to Strangers attempts to do, to its credit.

I lump this book in with two others I've read recently (see here and here) which champion or criticize attempts to find “third way” solutions to our problems. This pretty damn eccentric book actually only directly addresses its main issue in the initial and concluding five percent or so of the text. The rest is a long trip through apparently (at first) unrelated phenomena (including Cuba-US relations, Amanda Knox, and waterboarding) before returning to the main point.

Reading books about third ways is an exercise in optimism, because third way books imply that there are always new and interesting ways to look at old problems. (In addition, as the Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) recently said, “Reading Malcolm Gladwell always makes you feel smart.”) Since I suffer a chronic deficit of optimism, I am constantly mainlining any literature which seems to say that the world could be a better place, non-fiction or no.

The issue which gets the third way treatment here is the alarming number of police traffic stops in the US which end up with someone (usually the driver of the car) dead. This is a problem which is ripe for a third way analysis, because as it stands now it seems like you either must be in the tribe that says “Police are racists” or the tribe that says “Liberals are apologists for criminals”.

I admire Gladwell for defying the large number of people who are so vested in one of these orthodoxies that he will no doubt find, for years to come, his Twitter feed polluted with poorly-proofread denunciations of everything he has ever done or said.

Sometimes Gladwell demonstrates an obvious truth so clearly that you are almost ashamed to be surprised by it, like when he describes an psychology experiment which demonstrates that while most of us regard ourselves as creatures of unknowable complexity and depth of character, we also tend to engage in ridiculous reductions of the personalities of others into easy-to-dismiss stereotypes based on the flimsiest of evidence.

On the other hand, reading Gladwell means spending a lot of time saying to yourself, “Hey, wait a minute, what about [fill in thing you know a little something about here]?” For example, Gladwell has a long chapter about someone who managed to be a mole for Cuban intelligence in the US bureaucracy for many years. Having toiled in the vineyards of the sprawling federal bureaucracy myself, I felt that Gladwell missed some very important details about how people act there, and why. Without getting into too much spoiler-ish detail, I think Gladwell doesn't really understand the intensity with which fecal matters rains down on those who rock the boat here in the nation's capital, a factor that certainly influenced the events he narrates.

Overall, though, I was very happy to have been gifted this smart book and look forward to seeing if the world can, for once, defy my grouchy pessimism and actually allow a mere book to increase the amount of understanding in world and improve how we live. ...more

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Dec 15, 2019 Trevor rated it really liked it

Shelves: psychology

I haven’t been all that impressed by the last few books Gladwell has written and wasn’t even going to read this one at all – but then a friend at work said it related to some of the things I’ve been working on at the moment, and so I got hold of it – and I’m glad I did. In some ways this book could be summed up by saying that we are programmed to trust and believe people and that rather than needing to suspend disbelief, people often have to work very hard to lose our trust. For instance, I haven’t been all that impressed by the last few books Gladwell has written and wasn’t even going to read this one at all – but then a friend at work said it related to some of the things I’ve been working on at the moment, and so I got hold of it – and I’m glad I did. In some ways this book could be summed up by saying that we are programmed to trust and believe people and that rather than needing to suspend disbelief, people often have to work very hard to lose our trust. For instance, American spies seem to have a remarkable soft-spot for Cuban spies – with US spies seemingly incapable of ever detecting Cuban ones. I never know what to make of the CIA (and all the other various three-letter-agencies). I’ve read The Legacy of Ashes and the Blowback series, and I didn’t particularly come away from reading those with a particularly high estimations of the abilities of US spies. That said, perhaps they are in fact infinitely more clever than they seem – well, they would have to be, wouldn’t they? And so these books saying they are all gormless is part of some elaborate double blind exercise to put us off our guard.

Part of this details the torture techniques so gleefully adopted by the US in its war on terror, and so I had flashbacks to reading The Shock Doctrine. I find the whole idea of torture unspeakable. The US has much to answer for, but since it is the sole superpower, I guess we can’t expect it to answer for any of its crimes against humanity any time soon. Once again it was pretty clear that none of the information obtained under torture was in the least bit reliable – and not just because you might lie to get the torture to end, but also because memory is fragile and after torture the victim might even believe (really believe) they were George Washington if you electrocuted them enough.

Part of the problem I had with this book is that ‘strangers’ isn’t ever quite defined – and so the strangers often ended up being people quite like you and me. Although it discusses some of the black lives matter incidents, that is, where strangers were decidedly not treated with an excess of trust, what is somewhat ignored is the problem of the strangers who are like the children in Yemen – think back to the last time you read about that war for a moment. Hard to remember, isn’t it? Yet, it has been on the brink of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises for the last couple of years – and western governments are not only aiding the atrocities being carried out there, but also supplying arms and advice that is making matters a million times worse. Here are the real strangers. Like the strangers we send drones to blow to pieces. It all becomes like a hyper-real video game, the death of these strangers barely rates a shrug from us. There is, of course, money to be made in killing these desperately poor people, and this in a world where you could probably buy three or four dozen of them as effective slaves for less than the price of the drone we use to killed two or three of them.

But strangers at a distance are not the concern of this book. The strangers considered here are also not quite the strangers Simmel talks of – those who do not quite belong amongst us, but who arrive, and have not yet left. This would have made an interesting book too – particularly given the ‘Build The Wall’ hysteria in the US that elected a madman to its highest office and the ‘Stop the Boats’ chants in Australia that has won a couple of elections, or the ‘Turks are coming’ that decided Brexit. These strangers, the kind that might end up separated from their children in cages at the border, or who commit suicide on an island north of Australian somewhere (at least they didn’t drown) are also mostly left faceless and are certainly not people we treat with an excess of trust.

All the same, this book is interesting and it is worth knowing how we behave with strangers who are more like us. The best bits of this book were the bits where he adds in the complications of life. Far too often we assume that stories of the rape of children, for example, are simple and that if someone has been doing this for a long time, and they haven’t been immediately caught, there had to have been an elaborate coverup. But it is not just that we delay believing people could possibly do such things beyond the point where this becomes at all reasonable (something I think that is almost certainly true) but also that we also doubt our own sanity when confronted with ‘evidence’ that seems to imply sport’s coaches or Cardinals could possibly do such things – even when that evidence comes from our own eyes.

A dear friend of mine posted on Facebook recently an elaborate telephone scam she was nearly the victim of that was designed to get her to transfer money out of her account and into someone else’s. What was remarkable about this was how professional the whole thing was and how patient the scammers were. We are pre-programmed to trust people, and that isn’t a bad thing. As Gladwell makes clear with a couple of counter-examples in this book, where people end up distrusting everyone, and how their lives quickly become unliveable. As Socrates said, it is better to suffer an injury than to cause one – obviously, he meant that in terms of our souls – and I think this proves just as true today.

What is particularly interesting about this book is the notion that most of what happens in the world is ‘contextual’. There is a long discussion of campus rape cases and the problems that excessive drinking can cause, not merely since people end up diminished memories of what happened, even if not diminished responsibility for what happened. But this is then compared with other cultures were excessive drinking does not lead to rape or violence.

Similarly, the case of Silvia Plath is discussed and whether she would have committed suicide in some other way if town gas had been replaced with natural gas sooner. We often think suicide is something that you would only do after some serious consideration, that it is the ultimate in elaborate and decisive decision making – but often the opposite can be the case. Rather than being elaborately planned, often people who attempt suicide and who fortuitously live after the attempt say that what actually happened was that the opportunity presented itself and they aren’t all that sure why, but they took that opportunity. We humans are deeply strange, much more so than we generally give ourselves credit for. Like so much else in life, we often act first and provide a reasonable sounding motive later.

The bit of this that is probably worth the cover price of the book is the discussion of the word puzzle thing close to the start. People are given some words with some of the letters replaced with blanks and they have to fill those blanks to make actual words. The finished words might end up being ‘cheat, scare, trap’ stuff like that. But then the shrink giving the task asks, ‘so, what do you reckon that list of words says about you? It doesn’t seem terribly flattering.’ To which you are likely to reply, ‘well, I think it says nothing about me, it’s just the literary equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle.’ So far, all well and good. Except, when you show people photos of other people and then tell them how these others filled in the blanks – and the words they came up with – they have no trouble at all at being able to identify the psychological issues these people clearly suffer from given the words they generated. This is, of course, a long standing finding and is just one instance of an all-too-human set of conclusions we find ourselves jumping to – even after having just explained why the same thing couldn’t possibly apply to our-good-selves. We can’t help ourselves in finding that people like us are infinitely complex and must be understood from within that complexity – while people who are not like us are simple and behave in accordance to the stereotypes we hold of them.

This is interesting book, although, clearly with the provisos I’ve mentioned about what a stranger might look like.
...more

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Sep 14, 2019 Mehrsa rated it really liked it

What to say about Gladwell? I read everything he writes and I listen to his podcasts. Even as I cringe when he oversells his simplistic theories and misinterprets academic data to fit into cute stories. There are a lot of great stories in this book and some new takes on old ones, but at the end of the day the lens through which he demands we see these stories (i.e. our "default to truth" in talking to strangers) doesn't work. Sandra Bland's exchange with the officer did not result in her death ...more

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Sep 19, 2019 Andy rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Gladwell is an excellent storyteller, but I think that sometimes he's dangerously wrong.
When the president of Penn State hears about a former employee coming back to the college at night to "horse around" with a naked 11-year-old boy, well the most likely explanation is not benign. Gladwell keeps saying people default to the "truth" and to the "most likely" explanation. But in examples like this people are defaulting to denial. And that's not okay for those whose job is to be suspicious and Gladwell is an excellent storyteller, but I think that sometimes he's dangerously wrong.
When the president of Penn State hears about a former employee coming back to the college at night to "horse around" with a naked 11-year-old boy, well the most likely explanation is not benign. Gladwell keeps saying people default to the "truth" and to the "most likely" explanation. But in examples like this people are defaulting to denial. And that's not okay for those whose job is to be suspicious and responsible.

Gladwell seems surprised that people are gullible and that social trust is important for social animals to thrive. He talks about the Milgram experiments, and gets lost in the weeds about how they were bad theater, underemphasizing the main point, i.e. that 65% of people were sheep who obeyed authority figures telling them to do insane evil things. The implication for what he's talking about is that decisions are made by a few people who create the conditions that then affect everyone else. And so what really matters is what the shepherds and sheepdogs are doing to protect the sheep from the wolves and other perils. Those protectors are supposed to sniff out wolves in sheep's clothing--that's their job. So yeah, it's literally ancient wisdom that we can't have everybody crying wolf all the time, but we do need someone to look out for wolves.

I don't get journalists who don't get that some people have the role in society of being skeptical. If Gladwell's facts are correct about the Sandra Bland case, then the big issue there is the corruption of the scientific evidence on effective policing (basically the 80/20 rule: concentrate police scrutiny where the crimes are). Doing traffic stops everywhere all the time is just BS, regardless of racism issues. Wouldn't it be nice if someone had the job of calling BS on bad public policy?

Michael Lewis's podcast series "Against the Rules" is so far all about the decline of the "referee" in America, and I think his insights are more apposite for this discussion about trust and social cohesion than Gladwell's. You can't play a game without referees. Referees can't just defer to the players/cheaters on whether or not they've broken the rules. The undermining of arbiters is what destroys societies. ...more

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Dec 09, 2019 David rated it really liked it

Shelves: psychology

This is a wonderful book about major issues when talking to people. I thought, initially, that the book would be about everyday conversations during everyday interactions. Not at all. The book is really about the assumptions that we make about other people, and how those assumptions can be drastically wrong. It is about belief systems, and how we react when we encounter evidence that is contrary to those beliefs. Malcolm Gladwell took me into worlds that I had never even considered.

The main This is a wonderful book about major issues when talking to people. I thought, initially, that the book would be about everyday conversations during everyday interactions. Not at all. The book is really about the assumptions that we make about other people, and how those assumptions can be drastically wrong. It is about belief systems, and how we react when we encounter evidence that is contrary to those beliefs. Malcolm Gladwell took me into worlds that I had never even considered.

The main point in the book is that "You believe in something not because you have no doubts, but because you don't have enough doubts." There is an excellent story about Ana Montes, an agent for the Defense Intelligence Agency. She received glowing performance reviews over the years, despite the fact that she was a Cuban spy. Fidel Castro personally gave he a medal as an award for her activities. But despite the fact that her boyfriend worked for the Pentagon, and her brother and sister both worked for the FBI. She was interviewed in detail, and there were a few hints that she was a spy. Yet, nobody suspected that she was a spy, and when she was arrested, her coworkers were in disbelief. It's not that nobody had doubts--nobody had enough doubts.

Judges try to estimate the probability of defendants' recidivism. They want to look at the defendants' faces, and hear their attitudes. The problem is, judges do not do as good a job at predicting recidivism as computers, which only take into account cold, hard facts, and obviously don't take appearance and demeanor into account.

A concept known as coupling is very interesting. The suicide rate in an English town decreased dramatically when the town switched from coal gas to natural gas. The switch made it almost impossible to commit suicide using the gas that was supplied to homes. People did not want to use less convenient modes of suicide. Similar reductions in suicide rates have been found in other environments. It is inferred that if handguns were outlawed in the U.S., there would be 10,000 fewer suicides per year.

The only thing I don't like about this book, is that the topics seem to be scatter-shot. The topics covered are not only about talking to strangers. They cover a wide range of topics, and do not seem to have an overall theme. For example, the topic of coupling doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with talking to strangers. Why was this topic (and others) included in the book? Only because it is an interesting psychological phenomenon.

...more

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Oct 04, 2019 Traci at The Stacks rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This book has some MAJOR issues and was pretty enraging and frustrating. The biggest technical issue is that there is no definition of “stranger” which allows Gladwell to mold his thin arguments to any hot button topic he chooses. It feels like a publicity stunt to cram as many controversial people/events into the book for maximum shock value. The other huge issue is about how he discusses rape/racism/abuse without talking about race/power/toxic masculinity etc. it’s negligent and dangerous. ...more

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Sep 09, 2019 Peter Tillman rated it liked it

Shelves: new-tbp, high-prority, sci-tech

Off to a rousing start, and written to Gladwell's usual high standards. He does his homework, and surprises us at many turns. The Nature review that follows is full & fair. I doubt that I will find anything substantial to add. But I didn't end up liking the book as much as I expected. 3.5 stars, rounded down for the wandering and discursive narrative, and the inconclusive & disappointing ending.

So: read Nature's review first, and if you are intrigued, and especially if you have liked Off to a rousing start, and written to Gladwell's usual high standards. He does his homework, and surprises us at many turns. The Nature review that follows is full & fair. I doubt that I will find anything substantial to add. But I didn't end up liking the book as much as I expected. 3.5 stars, rounded down for the wandering and discursive narrative, and the inconclusive & disappointing ending.

So: read Nature's review first, and if you are intrigued, and especially if you have liked Gladwell's previous books, you should try this one. I did both, and ended up a bit disappointed. But it's still a worthwhile book, and I learned quite a lot. I skimmed most of the drunken student sex-crime stuff, and I'm not sure why he spent so much time on the Penn State coach and flagrant pederast. Well, the latter does show why the coach's bosses defaulted to believing his defenses, until the evidence of his guilt became overwhelming. And their hesitation came back to bite them in the ass, big time!

His thesis that our predisposition to believe and trust strangers is essential to the functioning of our open, wealthy society -- even though it leads to injuries and injustice to a (usually small) minority. Who sometimes get redress, even if (often) years later. And he tells some heartbreaking stories. So I may change my mind and round up to 4 stars. Today, though, I'm rounding down. 😎

“Those occasions when our trusting nature is violated are tragic,” Gladwell writes, and repeats for emphasis. “But the alternative — to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception — is worse.”

Nature's review: https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158...
Excerpt:
In 1996, an operative in the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) — Ana Belén Montes, known as “the Queen of Cuba” for her specialist knowledge — was suspected of being a double agent. A counter-intelligence officer, reviewing her file, decided that she had passed the test: “This woman is gonna be the next Director of Intelligence for DIA. She’s just fabulous.” She was arrested in 2001.

She was not even a particularly accomplished spy, Gladwell notes. Her secret codes from Havana were in her purse, her shortwave radio in a shoebox in her cupboard. “The issue with spies is not that there is something brilliant about them,” Gladwell writes. “It is that there is something wrong with us.” ...more

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Dec 28, 2019 Matthew Quann rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, audiobooks, sci-fi

My wife and I listened to this audiobook on two drives separated by about four months. I'm an IMMENSE fan of Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast (seriously, give it a listen) and was pretty jazzed to hear that he had decided to take a podcast-like approach for this book. So, instead of Gladwell's soothing voice at all times there's interviews, court readings, etc. It doesn't always work as well as the podcast does--I wish there were more of Gladwell in conversation with his subjects, he's a My wife and I listened to this audiobook on two drives separated by about four months. I'm an IMMENSE fan of Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast (seriously, give it a listen) and was pretty jazzed to hear that he had decided to take a podcast-like approach for this book. So, instead of Gladwell's soothing voice at all times there's interviews, court readings, etc. It doesn't always work as well as the podcast does--I wish there were more of Gladwell in conversation with his subjects, he's a compelling interviewer--but it does an excellent job approximating it.

I was pretty disappointed in Gladwell's last book, David & Goliath, which felt disjointed and didn't have the spark that ignited his past works. Luckily, Talking to Strangers is a return to form and tackles some controversial stories ripped from the headlines of the past few years. Gladwell covers black lives matter, the Jerry Sandusky rape case, some cool Cold War spy stories, Amanda Knox's infamous murder trial, and a host of other stories held together by a failure in communication.

More specifically, Gladwell is interested in the ways in which we fail to accurately assess strangers. Using the aforementioned examples as well as others he dissects where it all went wrong and what cognitive biases prevent us from seeing through falsehoods and misrepresentation. My wife and I were both taken by the Sandra Bland case that opens and closes the book. I think there's a tendency to view the evidence Gladwell presents on the basis of pre-established political views. But Gladwell does a great job of turning it back and forth and viewing the interaction through multiple lenses. It adds depth to a story that requires it and does more justice to it than would a quick headline.

There's some shortcomings in the book: rarely does Gladwell address race and gender, but I don't think that those topics are entirely central his thesis. To that point, there's lots of good nonfiction on the shelves these days that tackle those topics with greater depth and it just seems as if it is territory Gladwell didn't want to wade into. Fair enough! It just seems like there's greater understanding to be had from a more in depth look at how those factors influence his ideas about communication and its failures.

Even when Gladwell fails to convince me, he's always got my attention. He's a terrific storyteller and I could listen to him prattle on about almost anything. Despite Revisionist History being my favourite thing Gladwell is producing these days, this book is also a winner. It spurred on some cool conversations between my wife and I, plus we can be kind of picky about audiobooks and this one was an out-and-out family winner. Even though this tackles some of the darkest subject matter that I can recall Gladwell working with, it ends with a message I think is largely optimistic.

Great stuff, definite audiobook recommendation. ...more

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Aug 08, 2019 David Wineberg rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Malcolm Gladwell’s latest foray into human folly is its seemingly innate trust in strangers. We assume strangers are transparent, and can take what they do and say at face value. Sometimes we are wrong, but assuming everyone is evil is far worse. Talking To Strangers focuses (mostly) on a number of very high profile criminal cases we are all likely to be familiar with. They include the Amanda Knox case, the Jerry Sandusky case, the Brock Turner case, the Sandra Bland case, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, ...more

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Sep 04, 2019 Toni rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: arcs-2019

In Talking to Strangers, I believe all Malcolm really wants to tell us, is everything our parents use to tell us: 1. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers (or in magazines, or the internet.) 2. Trust only family, not strangers; but be careful everywhere. 3. Don’t believe anything anyone tells you until you check it out first. (This could’ve meant, ask Mom and/or Dad, go to the library, ask someone we know and is smart.)
Most people have their default setting at TRUST; we want to believe In Talking to Strangers, I believe all Malcolm really wants to tell us, is everything our parents use to tell us: 1. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers (or in magazines, or the internet.) 2. Trust only family, not strangers; but be careful everywhere. 3. Don’t believe anything anyone tells you until you check it out first. (This could’ve meant, ask Mom and/or Dad, go to the library, ask someone we know and is smart.)
Most people have their default setting at TRUST; we want to believe you; we really want you to tell us the truth, and we really hope that’s what you’re doing. We have high hopes! And if you grew up in America you just can’t help being positive and optimistic. Well, most people, not all.
Growing up in New Jersey, in a second-generation, Italian American family; our default setting was SKEPTICAL; meaning you have to prove yourself trustworthy first. My parents would try to figure out if someone was lying rather than discuss the topic. That’s what their immigrant parents taught them. (Living in NJ just added to sarcasm.) I taught my kids the same thing; never believe someone at face value, consider your source first. Then try to figure out what they’re asking or telling you, based on what you already know. THINK!
Obviously, Malcolm delves deeper into why we trust strangers, and why we initially believe them. What cues are we missing, what didn’t we hear, what in their tone didn’t I pick up on?! As is his way, Malcolm brings several nationally known examples and valuable research to explain why and how this happens, frequently.
The case that stuck with me the most is the Sandra Bland case in Texas, from 2015. The case where the young officer stopped her for a minor traffic error, but because she acted nervous, he thought she was hiding something and misread as suspicious. He bullied her every action, ending up pulling her out of the car, to ground in cuffs. She died three days later, in jail, by suicide. Malcolm describes the entire encounter, case, and final trial in the book. (In the audio, which is excellent, Malcolm plays all original recordings; such as this encounter.) This story alone is worth reading this book! My opinion.
Many examples you will recognize are discussed, theories are raised and labeled. No need for me to list them here; better to encounter them with the case they match, and Malcolm’s words to describe them.
Very interesting book wanders some here and there, but solid. Superb audio.

Thank you Netgalley, Little, Brown and Co. and Malcolm Gladwell ...more

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Nov 17, 2019 Tanja Berg rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: psychology-psychiatry

I started reading this book right after I had managed a social gaffe - or so I thought. After I separated from my husband this summer, I started dancing swing. Not to look for anything, but to get out of the house and learn something new. Most of the people at the course were in pairs or retirees. Except a boy in his 30’s. We started talking and we started going to the dance evenings on Wednesdays in addition to the Monday classes. I would dance with others, but he would only dance with me. So I I started reading this book right after I had managed a social gaffe - or so I thought. After I separated from my husband this summer, I started dancing swing. Not to look for anything, but to get out of the house and learn something new. Most of the people at the course were in pairs or retirees. Except a boy in his 30’s. We started talking and we started going to the dance evenings on Wednesdays in addition to the Monday classes. I would dance with others, but he would only dance with me. So I eventually interpreted this as interest and came on pretty strong with ambiguous results. After I thought, “oh lord, I misread”. A week of silence followed.

I started reading this book and apparently misreading people is really very common - particularly in regards to sexual interest. We really are clueless as to what the subject of our interest might really want. Another Wednesday came along and the situation is no longer ambiguous. Either it just needed more time to mature or I just to the inner swing of a turn we were going around anyway.

Malcolm Gladwell takes us through real cases of misunderstandings and shows us how we misinterpret strangers. Life isn’t a “Friends” episode and people are not transparent.

Here’s another example: at work I am told I am easy to read. I took a moment to consider this. It’s a part of my authenticity and part of my constructed image. What I say and do and feel needs to match. It makes others perceive me as safe. I need them to believe me or I cannot lead. That doesn’t me I can’t hide what I’m feeling, but most of the time being transparent serves my purpose.

We don’t do well with “mismatched” people. Nervous truth tellers or calm liars. We default to the truth. People trained to detect lies do worse than lay people in detecting the mismatched. That’s a scary thought. Best to behave according to expectations.

This book definitely gave me some new insights, many more than the few tidbits laid bare here. Definitely recommended!
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Nov 07, 2019 Candie rated it really liked it

3.5 stars.

I really enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's books. I enjoy his writing style a lot and his books are so thought provoking. He leaves you thinking about things you never would have thought about, in ways you never would have considered. I like how he gets you to look at things from different perspectives

I am torn on this book. I did really enjoy reading it but I did not agree with everything he said, especially in the areas regarding racism and sexual abuse. The situation involving Sandra Bland 3.5 stars.

I really enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's books. I enjoy his writing style a lot and his books are so thought provoking. He leaves you thinking about things you never would have thought about, in ways you never would have considered. I like how he gets you to look at things from different perspectives

I am torn on this book. I did really enjoy reading it but I did not agree with everything he said, especially in the areas regarding racism and sexual abuse. The situation involving Sandra Bland he would have us conclude that the officer was just doing the job that the higher ups trained him to do so the fault should be with the people who implement these tactics. I agree that the tactics need to be reviewed, but I don't think that they explain the officers choices in this situation. I see no reason why he should have ever tried to physically force her from her car in any way. Not to mention that he escalated to power really quickly and it appeared to be more about his pride because she was arguing with him.

I think there was a lot of truth in much of the things he talked about such as how we naturally default to truth as it is the more likely situation. We can totally miss or ignore something that is right in front of our faces because that something rarely happens. So we reason it away. It couldn't be that. Also, how we judge and evaluate people and feel like we can read people or know what they are all about and we often have it all wrong. We don't think people have us all figured out though because we are very complex and our thoughts and actions are based around so much; others are just as complex.

I also feel like in this book he made some generalizations that I didn't feel fit in order to make his point and he oversimplifies some things and made some people's actions seem okay based on miscommunication, when they very clearly were not okay. Suicide being coupled seemed a bit oversimplified. I mean he had a chart showing data that once the type of gas in stoves were changed, suicide rates went down. So he concluded that people only wanted to commit suicide in that way; once that way was taken away the majority of people no longer would. This leaves out so many variables and I think greatly oversimplifies the data. I'm not saying he is wrong but there didn't seem to be any mention of any further study to see if he was right. What if death by suicide was just more obvious in that way? Maybe people who committed suicide by taking pills were just mislabeled as an overdose? Or people who committed suicide by driving into a big truck or off a cliff were just mislabeled as car accidents? I don't know that this is the case either, I'm just saying it seems to be a bit of a post hoc fallacy to me.

This book left me with so much to think about and I had to stop many times to just think about or research topics or ideas further. Although there was much I didn't necessarily agree with, I still found it very interesting and I really did enjoy reading it and couldn't put it down. I will definitely read another book by him if he comes out with one. ...more

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Jun 21, 2019 SheAintGotNoShoes rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Thanks so much for choosing me as winner in the giveaway !

I loved this book !! I always thought about the disparity of meeting someone who seemed 'so nice' and someone you wanted to develop a friendship or relationship with, only to have an opposite view shortly after. Did I misjudge ? Am I too picky, critical and judgmental ? Are they really a sociopath ?

This book explains a lot of that thru mismatching, which is basically how someone appears at a given time as opposed to who they really are. ...more

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Jul 30, 2019 Rachel rated it liked it · review of another edition

I’m always fascinated and provoked by Gladwell’s work—this book is no exception. But there are some big leaps here that make me itchy. Still processing.

Bottom line: We’re generally terrible at understanding the actions of strangers, and when things take a turn for the worse/unexpected, we blame the stranger.

Got it. Feel it. And I like how Gladwell sheds light on the Sandra Bland case. The section on Brock Turner? It troubled me.

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Oct 08, 2019 BookOfCinz rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2019-reads, absolute-favorite, believe-the-hype, cant-shut-up-about-this, history, edge-of-your-pages, loved, readcaribbean, self-improvement, arc

Like Cortes, we need translators to make sense of the world. Talking to Strangers is about why we are so bad at that act of translation

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know at the core set out to show why we are so bad at communicating with strangers and what gets in the way. Gladwell, through a series of stories showed how talking to strangers can go really far left.

Is this my favourite Gladwell book? No. I felt the book meandered a lot. I felt a lot was ...more

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Nov 02, 2019 Brandon Forsyth rated it liked it

I really like Malcolm Gladwell, and I think some of his writing belongs in the Hall of Fame, but it’s hard to read this book and not feel like he’s sort of missed the point. No chapter on race? No chapter on gender? I can (maybe) understand trying to look beyond those things to the root of what makes us so bad at interacting with other people, but it feels like many of the examples he’s taken here (Sandra Bland in particular) have huge factors of sexism and racism that are key to understanding ...more

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About Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell

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Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers—The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, an audio content company that produces the podcasts Revisionist History, which reconsiders things both overlooked and misunderstood, and Broken Record, where he, Rick Rubin, and Bruce Headlam interview ...more

Books by Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

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“The right way to talk to strangers is with caution and humility.” — 13 likes

“The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly. The same convictions can make us reluctant to take advice from others who cannot know our private thoughts, feelings, interpretations of events, or motives, but all too willing to give advice to others based on our views of their past behavior, without adequate attention to their thoughts, feelings, interpretations, and motives. Indeed, the biases documented here may create a barrier to the type of exchanges of information, and especially to the type of careful and respectful listening, that can go a long way to attenuating the feelings of frustration and resentment that accompany interpersonal and intergroup conflict.” — 10 likes

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