Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know
Malcolm Gladwell
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. more
388 pages, Hardcover
First published Little, Brown and Company
4.02
Rating
288706
Ratings
23338
Reviews
Malcolm Gladwell
135 books 35465 followers
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 musicians across a wide range of genres. Gladwell has been included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list and touted as one of Foreign Policy's Top Global Thinkers.Community reviews
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. more
TW: detailed descriptions of rape and pedophiliaIf 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 are small, poorly designed and/or not replicable. The man does know how to create an engaging narrative and create ‘aha’ moments that excite the reader. more
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 “misunderstanding” Sandra Bland and Neville Chamberlain “misunderstanding” Hitler and make that work. And I don't know that I agree - actually, no, I'm pretty sure I don't - about the way he views the Stanford rape case as a "misunderstanding". *But, still, I couldn't look away from this book. more
When I started this book, I was convinced that I would at least give it 4 stars. Malcolm Gladwell is a great narrator, and the audiobook is very well produced, including music, voice actors, and excerpts from real interviews and videotapes. He explores interesting topics ranging from myopia, default to truth, and the way we misread others’ facial expressions. However, I have huge issues with his limiting takes on rape and police brutality. He takes several big-name cases (Sandra Bland, Brock Turner, Jerry Sandusky, etc. more
Who gave Malcolm Gladwell the authority to invalidate the trauma of thousands of people. I can't believe trees sacrificed their lives so this piece of garbage could be printed 😃This might just be the most problematic book I've ever read, and I don't say that lightly. It was so disgustingly, blatantly wrong in all ways that I was tempted to throw my phone across the room. In this book, Malcolm Gladwell introduces the idea that many tragedies across the globe were caused by miscommunication between strangers. His thesis is that misreading social cues causes murder, assault, and aggression. more
Never Trust a Blood RelativeTalking 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. more
UPDATE 9/23/19I 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. more
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. more
Malcolm Gladwell is viewed as a hugely influential writer and I was eagerly anticipating reading this, my first taste of his work, a body of his thinking on how we, the people, are extraordinarily gullible when it comes to strangers, all too easily taken in by them in our general eagerness to trust rather than be more cautious. He gives a raft of well known examples from history, such as Neville Chamberlain being all to willing to take Hitler at face value, and more recent contemporary examples, such as the runaway success of Bernie Madoff's fraudulent ponzi scheme until it all fell apart, interspersed with interviews with prominent personalities. It turns out that overall, I was doomed to be disappointed with this book. For me he makes far too many generalisations, often jumping to ill thought out judgements and conclusions whilst omitting key variables, and all too keen to let off those with responsibilities to prevent abuse. The problem is that he sounds frighteningly plausible and genial in the manner in which he lays out his often controversial, poorly researched thinking, so disarmingly seductive, and there are occasions that I cannot deny he is certainly interesting and thought provoking. more
Most damning self-analysis ever: "I'd rather be interesting than be right" --Malcolm Gladwell, to Jane Pauley, CBS Sunday Morning, 06/20/21Not 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. more
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 when a society does not know how to talk to strangers. more
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 happened around 2014. more
How should we talk to strangers. Who are the people we can trust. Who are those we should give the benefit of the doubt. What should we do if someone breaks our trust. Malcolm Gladwell answers all the above questions through this book. more
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. more
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. more
REREAD REVIEW: this book was even worse the second time through. This kind of victim blaming bile is a huge part of what upholds white supremacy and toxic masculinity. Everything below holds, but I’m somehow more enraged this time. The persuasive skills displayed in crafting Gladwells arguments are sickening and in bad faith. This book has some MAJOR issues and was pretty enraging and frustrating. more
Audiobook. narrated by Malcolm GladwellBeing 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. more
When we meet someone new you know nothing about. We trust strangers too easily. We might think someone is dangerous when they're not, or miss someone who is harming. We trust authority figures too much, even if they're wrong. We judge people based on stereotypes instead of getting to know them. more
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 Happier podcast, can't wait for that. more
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know, Malcolm GladwellMalcolm Timothy Gladwell CM is an English-born Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. Miscommunication, interactions and assumptions people make when dealing with those that they don't know. 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. عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «گفتوگو با غریبهها: هر آنچه که لازم است راجع به کسانی که نمیشناسیم بدانیم»؛ «گفتوگو با غریبهها: چرا در تشخیص حالات درونی دیگران شکست میخوریم»؛ «صحبت با غریبهها: آنچه در مورد افراد غریبه باید بدانیم»؛ «سخن گفتن با بیگانهها: (آنچه در مورد کسانی که نمیشناسیم بایستی بدانیم)»؛ نویسنده: مالکوم (مالکولم) گلدول؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز شانزدهم ماه آوریل سال2022میلادیعنوان: گفتوگو با غریبهها: هر آنچه که لازم است راجع به کسانی که نمیشناسیم بدانیم؛ نویسنده: مالکوم گلدول؛ مترجم: مهبان مقدم؛ ویراستار: فرزانه فرزانیان؛ تهران، هورمزد؛ ��ال1399؛ در283ص؛ شابک9786227251203؛ موضوع روانشناسی از نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده21معنوان: گفتوگو با غریبهها: چرا در تشخیص حالات درونی دیگران شکست میخوریم؛ نویسنده: مالکوم گلدول؛ مترجم: رضا اسکندریآذر؛ ویراستار: نازنین سرکاراتپور؛ تهران، کتاب مرو؛ سال1399؛ در249ص؛ شابک9786226202824؛عنوان: صحبت با غریبهها: آنچه در مورد افراد غریبه باید بدانیم؛ نویسنده: ملکوم گلدول؛ مترجم: محمدرضا مهم؛ آران، پیام امین؛ سال1399؛ در263ص؛ شابک9786008562139؛عنوان: سخن گفتن با بیگانهها: (آنچه در مورد کسانی که نمیشناسیم بایستی بدانیم)؛ مالکولم گلدول؛ مترجم: اصغر اندرودی؛ کرج، در دانش بهمن، سال1399؛ در392ص؛ شابک9789641742524؛مالکولم گلدول باور دارند، درباره ی ابزار و استراتژیهایی که درباره ی فهمیدن افرادی که نمیشناسیم به کار میبریم اشتباهاتی وجود دارد؛ و نمیدانیم چگونه با انسانهایی که نمیشناسیم گفتگو کنیم؛ باید بدانید که همه غریبه هستند؛ ایشان در این کتاب خویش به بررسی پرونده های «جری سانداسکی»؛ «آماندا ناکس»؛ «امیلی داو»؛ «سیلویا پلات»؛ و «ساندرا بلاند» نیز پرداخته اندتاریخ بهنگام رسانی 28/01/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. more
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. more
Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell appears to be a contentious book: the readers and reviewers have either hated it or loved it, nothing in between. I selected the audiobook version because the author usually reads his books, as he did in this one. The audiobook had an added bonus of providing the reader with actual or reproduced interviews and transcripts of the cases he used as examples. Gladwell extensively used well-known cases that show that, when dealing with people we do not know, we are not always the best judges of their character. Examples of this vary from Hitler to the Amanda Knox case in Italy and many others. more
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 convicted sex offender like Brock Turner, even if he drank too much, I just don't see that as an excuse for his behavior. But that was the basis I got from that example, they were both drunk and so there was misunderstanding, when I was waiting for rape culture to be brought up and added into the mix. more
مالکوم گلدول یک داستان گوی فوقا��عادست. تصور کنید تعداد زیادی داستان و فکت تاریخی و نتیجه پژوهش با یک هدف (مثلا) مشخص کنارهم گذاشته بشه؛ از داستان زن سیاه پوست ساندرا بِلند که توسط پلیس متوقف میشه و چند روز بعد خودش رو در سلولش می کشه، تا ماجرای آماندا ناکس، جاسوس های کوبایی، هیتلر، سیلویا پلات و تعرض به کودکان توسط جری سنداسکی و لری نسار. همه ی این ها فقط بخشی از روایت های این کتابه. کی دلش نمی خواد در مورد این همه اتفاق جالب بشنوه/بخونه؟اما مشکل از جایی شروع میشه که با گذشتن از نصف کتاب متوجه میشی که فقط داری داستان های جالبی می خونی که فقط این جمله به هم متصلشون کرده ببین فهمیدن آدم هایی که نمی شناسیمشون چقدر سخته. نه بابا. more
Clearly the author has never been sexually assaulted. If you find reading graphic descriptions of rape and pedophelia upsetting, this isn’t a book you’ll enjoy. The author is dismissive of rape victims. He concludes that the people who protect predators and disbelieve rape victims are “defaulting to truth. ” There were several times he defends the people who protected pedophiles like Jerry Sandusky and Nassar. more
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. more
We think we can easily see into the hearts of others based on the flimsiest of clues. We jump at the chance to judge strangers. We would never do that to ourselves, of course. We are nuanced and complex and enigmatic. But the stranger is easy. more
A great book to make you feel smart. Gladwell digs deep into high profile scandals throughout recent history and bases his observations on what must be extensive research. Yet it doesn't read like "research" it reads like a mystery that needs to be solved. Unfortunately, as is often the case with research, the more you know, the further away answers appear to be. We watch the news and think how open-and-shut a murder case might be, not realizing how vastly complicated things are from a socio-cultural perspective. more
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. more
If I'm earning an MFA in Creative Writing from YouTube University (as well as streaming platforms like MasterClass), then Malcolm Gladwell is one of my professors. The New Yorker staff writer never ceases to teach me something mind-blowing about storytelling. Published in 2019, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know is the first of Gladwell's non-fiction books that I've read. It focuses on the interactions and assumptions we make when dealing with strangers. Gladwell closes the book with an examination of the events that led to the suicide of Sandra Bland in 2015, three days after being arrested in Prairie View, Texas for a traffic violation. more