Talking to Strangers Pdf

ISBN: B07NJCG1XS
Title: Talking to Strangers Pdf What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and number-one best-selling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, David and Goliath, and What the Dog Saw, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers - and why they often go wrong.

How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true? 

Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland - throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his number one best seller, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

Doesn't deliver. As one reviewer mentioned, the Interlude and the section on Brock Turner are absolutely cringeworthy for a host of reasons. I too almost stopped reading before the I got to the first chapter, and now I'm sort of disappointed that I read all the way to the end. Fascinating facts are revealed in typical Gladwell fashion which keeps the pace moving. But he comes terribly short on providing any sort of value for actually talking to strangers. Gladwell basically says, "Hey! We suck at talking to strangers. Here's some interesting situations that prove my point. But I have no ideas on how to be better at talking to strangers."Sadly, Gladwell places his foot in his mouth... 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 happened around 2014.“Strange interlude.” Really?That phrasing suggests that this treatment was some sort of aberration in American history and that the violence only happened during the few years he references. Did Gladwell really mean to ignore America’s long history of this problem?I don’t think so? I think he may have meant that the attention paid to police violence was unusual, but dude, choose your words much more carefully.Later on, there are some good points made about how and why we tend to misunderstand each other.But, again, I almost put the book down, this time while reading the chapter on the Brock Turner sexual assault case. Without going into detail, that chapter could only have been written by someone who's buried his head in the sand over the past five years or so.It’s tough to ignore the problematic elements of Talking to Strangers. I could definitely see the discussion of the causes of sexual assault offending some readers to the point that they abandon the book altogether. I’ve definitely enjoyed other books by the author a lot more than this one. Two stars.Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for giving me a DRC of this book."We think we can easily see into the hearts of others based on the flimsiest of clues." Malcolm Gladwell is a gifted writer who engages our minds and emotions in his works of non-fiction. In "Talking to Strangers,” he tells us true stories that, at first, seem to be unrelated. A police stop ends in tragedy; Neville Chamberlain and other political figures famously misconstrued Hitler's bellicose intentions; experienced judges grant bail to defendants who, they realize too late, should have remained in jail; the sociopath, Bernie Madoff, conducted a fraudulent investment scheme for years, deceiving many individuals who thought that he was a genius at making money; Amanda Knox served prison time for a murder that she did not commit.Studies show that most of us who encounter apparently benevolent individuals are predisposed to believe that they are not putting on an act. Conversely, when we meet a man or woman who behaves weirdly or inappropriately, we are likely to jump to negative conclusions about him or her, even when there is little hard evidence to support our assumptions. The author suggests that many of us have an inflated opinion of our ability to size up people. Research suggests that we are not as objective as we would like to believe, and are therefore prone to misinterpret comments, intonations, facial expressions, and gestures. Moreover, we do not always realize that people whose backgrounds differ from ours may communicate in unfamiliar ways.Gladwell asks: How did double-agents who telegraphed their guilt get away with their treasonous behavior for so long? Why didn't everyone recognize Madoff for what he is—a ruthless swindler? Which of Amanda Knox's personality traits, remarks, and deeds convinced Italian authorities that she killed her roommate? These compelling examples raise intriguing questions about why we sometimes reach erroneous conclusions when we assess the truthfulness of our fellow human beings. it should be noted that a few chapters in this book—such as the essays on suicide, young adults who drink so heavily that they black out, and the efforts of police to cut down on crime—are thought-provoking but oversimplified and not particularly relevant to Gladwell's central premise. Still, this work of non-fiction is an entertaining and enlightening wake-up call. We should be cautious when we decide who our friends are as opposed to who is likely to stab us in the back. Too often we are dead wrong.

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