Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know Hardcover – September 10, 2019

Let me start with what Malcolm Gladwell believes happened in the Sandra Bland case. During the 1970s, there was an experiment conducted in Kansas City, Missouri, which found that increased police patrols had no effect on crime. During the 1990s, a similar experiment, again conducted in Kansas City, instead targeted extra police patrols in very specific high-crime areas - and by very specific I mean city blocks, not streets, blocks. That experiment was incredibly effective and demonstrated that stopping individuals for very minor traffic infractions led to an increase in arrests, gun seizures, drug seizures, and, most importantly, crime.Law enforcement agencies around the country took notice; sadly, they walked away with the wrong lesson. The officer who stopped Sandra Bland that fateful day had been trained to stop potentially suspicious individuals for very little reason. He was further trained to look for evidence of guilt rather than assuming anyone was just going about their business. Why? Because law enforcement agencies extrapolated and thought that what worked well in a very specific high-crime area would also work everywhere else. That just wasn’t the case. It led to an overly suspicious police force and, of course, the general populace growing increasing wary of encountering police. It also unfortunately disproportionately impacted African Americans and ultimately led to the Black Lives Matter movement.I am a HUGE fan of Malcolm Gladwell's work. He singlehandedly taught me to appreciate nonfiction. His books are both informative and entertaining, educational but really enjoyable to read. Outliers in particular has stuck with me. I also enjoyed his other books, not counting What the Dog Saw, which was a bit different from the others.In any case, I have been looking forward to Talking to Strangers since I first heard of its upcoming release. It does not disappoint. I have a master's degree in anthropology, so Gladwell's own description of Talking to Strangers spoke to me immediately. After listing high-profile examples including Sandra Bland, Brock Turner, and Amanda Knox, Gladwell says: “In all of these cases, the parties involved relied on a set of strategies to translate one another's words and intentions. And in each case, something went very wrong. In Talking to Strangers, I want to understand those strategies—analyze them, critique them, figure out where they came from, find out how to fix them.”Largely using high-profile cases with which readers will be familiar, Malcolm Gladwell wants to teach us how to communicate better with those who are different. He presents us with two puzzles:First, why can't we tell when the stranger is front of us is lying to our face? (ANSWER: Because we default to truth. Society could not function otherwise. There don't just need to be red flags for us to recognize deception - there need to be an overwhelming number of them.)Second, how is it that meeting a stranger can sometimes make us worse at making sense of that person than not meeting them? (ANSWER: Because we assume transparency, meaning we assume we can read their intentions on their faces and through their actions. It turns out, we can't. We're really bad at it.)“We have people struggling with their first impressions of a stranger. We have people struggling when they have months to understand a stranger. We have people struggling when they meet with someone only once, and people struggling when they return to the stranger again and again. They struggle with assessing a stranger's honesty. They struggle with a stranger's character. They struggle with a stranger's intent.“It's a mess.”It is this mess which Malcolm Gladwell hopes to make more comprehensible.As always, well written and highly readable. But I am dissatisfied with the conclusion. How do we best talk to strangers? "What is required of us is restraint and humility." Sure. We need to acknowledge that strangers are complex and that we have no clue whether they are telling the truth or lying and that we certainly can not read their intentions from their facial expressions or actions. That's the humility part. The restraint part is recognizing all of that and not assuming we have a clue. But what Gladwell fails to do is actually give us a template of how to talk to strangers.Talking to people is confusing; the older I get, the more I recognize that. I have long since gotten that defaulting to truth can be problematic but assuming that everyone else is lying is worse. I don't have to look any further than neurodiversity to grasp that someone who fidgets or avoids eye contact may not be guilty of anything other than a diagnosis that is unknown to me. While this book was enlightening and informative on a large scale, on the minor scale that is my life, it did not teach me anything I did not already know in my quest to talk to strangers - and that is disappointing. I remain as bewildered as always by the other. And, I suppose, recognizing that already puts me ahead of the game.EDIT: I have continued mulling over this book, and one thing puzzles me. Gladwell says repeatedly in the first half of the book that the correct course of action is to assume others are telling the truth because lies are rare. But liars are not rare! As he demonstrated with the quiz experiment, when given the opportunity 30% of people cheated - and then lied about it! I suppose you could assume lies are rare if you also assume that most liars don't lie all the time. I prefer the maxim "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

Gladwell manages to piece together seemingly unrelated horrific, tragic, questionable, and confusing events to find a common thread among them. While I don’t disagree with a common thread, I am still pondering the last chapter and what it all really means. What do we take away? What do I take away? It’s a similar feeling at the end of all Gladwell books. I’m glad to have known and pondered these different events in our recent history, and to have gained some skills for the critical thinking needed to get through future events.

Malcolm Gladwell takes the reader through an interesting assortment of well known events to demonstrate how people reach the wrong conclusion about another person’s behavior during an event and often because of training that is not well founded. He provides information about well-known events that were not well known at the time of the event, resulting in a re-evaluation of your own conclusions about the event. Although this is an easy read, Gladwell guides the reader to some interesting theories. It’s worth the read.

The book is fantastic however there are two topics that are very touchy. Be cautious if your school’s recommend this for students due to mature content.

Didn't know what to expect but I love the way he writes. Although 300+ pages, it's an easy read for my second 300+ page book. Lots of stories. I am gonna order outliers next probably.

Very thought provoking and should be required reading by college students, especially those prone to heavy drinking, policy makers and the various branches of law enforcement. We need to rethink our assumptions.

I can better understand how so many mistakes can happen in any encounter with a stranger. It's a real problem & is troubling.

Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers examines our severe limitations in reading others, in perceiving truthfulness, lies, and guilt. It rattles our sense of wisdom and replaces it with a newfound humility when we think we correctly judge or measure another person. The price of these misjudgments can be fatal. Or cost someone their reputation or life savings. A very sobering read.

Sorry, but I did not like this book. The best thing I can say is that it is well-written, very fluent and conversational as one would expect from a top New Yorker writer. I have never read anything else by Malcolm Gladwell as far as I know, but I was curious and even a bit excited to try this out because he is so well known for influential books such as The Tipping Point.However, I'm afraid this book has nothing to say. It is a compendium of interesting crime cases and celebrated moments from history and popular culture, ranging from Hitler to Friends to 9/11 and a whole load of controversial court cases, with some examination of suicide as a diversion. For the first half of it - and it's a very quick read, so do give it a try if you are inclined to doubt my criticism - I just found myself wondering: “where is he going with this? What is the thesis? What is his point?”Ostensibly the book is about whether or not we can judge strangers. I think. But many of the examples that he draws on have no apparent lesson. Many of them are nice little vignettes which show how broad-ranging the author's mind is, and would make good “dinner party anecdotes” - but rather in a mansplaining vein, where you tell someone that what they think about Chamberlain and Hitler is so wrong because there's so much more to it... But actually they’re right.There are digressions via Cuban spies, Bernie Madoff, Jerry Sandusky and Amanda Knox. All nicely told. But what does the book actually tell us? Sorry Mr Gladwell. I got nothing.

**CONTAINS SPOILERS**This is a thought-provoking book on the premise that the majority of people are unable to tell whether a stranger is trustworthy.The author starts and ends with the true, tragic case of 28 year-old African American Sandra Bland, who in 2015 was pulled over by a traffic cop in Texas, arrested, and committed suicide in her jail cell three days later.Chapters detail famous cases of the consequences of trusting – Montezuma and Cortes, Chamberlain and Hitler, spies undetected for years in high places. I couldn’t see the relevance of all the cases, for example the drunken rape case, interrogation methods and the Amanda Knox trials. A better example might have been the Lindy Chamberlain dingo case, to demonstrate how people mistrust innocent people whose body language does not match our expectations.Gladwell asks “why can’t we tell when the stranger in front of us is lying?” He suggests that those recruiting, or judges setting bail, make better choices based on what they hear or read, rather than on who they are looking at. He also suggests that to keep society harmonious, we default to a position of trust.We all know that those younger, prettier, taller, better dressed and educated – and in some cases whiter – have an advantage in life. I could add examples to the author’s, our former children’s laureate Malorie Blackman who was singled out in a first class carriage for a ticket check, the way the family of Stephen Lawrence were treated by the police.I was still struggling to keep up and follow the train of thought at the chapter on coupling, the theory that, for example, if someone wants to commit suicide and at the perfect and ideal time the perfect and ideal method presents itself they will go ahead, otherwise they might not carry out the act.I have read the transcript of the exchange between the cop and Sandra Bland and also watched a video of the exchange. The cop, who was rightly subsequently sacked, quickly became aggressive. But so did Bland – even the fact she lit a cigarette early in the exchange shocked me. These were two people with supressed anger and aggression, resentment, and preconceived judgements on both sides that escalated into disaster.It turns out that the tragic Bland, who had a promising life ahead of her, had a troubled past. Certainly she should never have been pulled over, during an aggressive and unnecessary “stop and search” programme.I also struggle to place the incident in the context of life in America, living as I do in England. It seems a uniquely American encounter to me. I cannot imagine anyone lighting a cigarette when pulled over by the police unless wishing for further antagonism, and British cops do not – yet – carry guns. But we currently have the situation here where anyone criticizing a certain new royal princess for acting like a prima donna film star flashing her cash is called “racist” when please, look at her – olive skin and sleek straight hair. It’s nothing to do with her background – her sister in law got equal flack for her mother’s profession. It’s about behaviours and we need to carefully separate the two, and challenge our own and others preconceptions.Malorie Blackman politely challenged the ticket inspector: “Aren’t you going to check anyone else’s ticket?”. The family of Stephen Lawrence gained nationwide respect for their quiet dignity in their fight for justice. Sandra Bland was treated appallingly, humiliated and isolated, and she didn’t have the resources internal or external to overcome that treatment, spending her last days sobbing alone in her cell. A dreadful, damning example of policing gone awry. Perhaps she suspected she never would have found redress after release. This book, I hope, will in some way make up for that and I salute the author for it.

Well-written, an easy read. Lots of interesting stories?But, and it is a big but ...What is the point of the book? There don't seen to be any startling insights. The vignettes are over-used and repetitive. There's almost nothing on solutions. In conclusion, a shallow second-rate book. Pity ...

Suppose all you wanted to say was “We should (also) accept the limits of our ability to decipher strangers”, but you don’t have enough material to project it as a great idea, and you have to write a complete book about it, what would you do?1. You will research a lot of unrelated anecdotes and try to piece them together. Even if the association of a particular anecdote, with your book’s central idea, is at best tenuous, still you would try to twist it into the story.2. You will write it brilliantly. You will give away a sliver of a story here and another after a few pages and return to the story after a few chapters, trying to rise as many imaginary hairs as possible.3. Try putting the title of the book at weird places. It has to be reminded to the readers once in a while that the title has something to do with the book, and that the interesting unrelated incidents you are narrating are in fact, justifiably included.4. Of course, cash in your name, if it is popular enough. Spend some of the goodwill you generated previously by writing valuable books.In summary, you try too hard. Malcolm Gladwell is guilty of the same crime.

Somehow I was expecting rather more from this celebrated author. I am about halfway through and have found it to be a series of stories which make the same basic point. There is nothing intriguing to get your teeth into and have found the book shallow and very disappointing. Two stars is probably generous!