Talking To Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

TALKING TO STRANGERS by Malcolm Gladwell is his latest work and explores “What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know.”  As is his style, Gladwell uses multiple real-life examples to illustrate his points.  Here, he refers to the cases of Brock Turner (convicted Stanford rapist), Amanda Knox, Bernie Madoff, Adolf Hitler, and the perils of community policing which led to Sandra Bland’s death. Gladwell explores the psychology related to the “Stranger Problem” by describing the work of Tim Levine and his commentary on our tendency to “default to truth,” often misunderstanding or “giving the benefit of the doubt,” believing the stranger when we should tend to be more skeptical. While entertaining as always, it was sometimes difficult to reconcile Gladwell’s analysis with racism, sexism and other unconscious biases which may have as much or more impact on our interactions. In The Washington Post, Wray Herbert remarked upon Gladwell’s “impressive range of historical conundrums,” but also noted that he “dances around the topic of torture” and provides an “unconvincing and troubling” analysis regarding Sandra Bland. Gladwell has written numerous best-sellers (The Tipping Point, Outliers, Blink) and TALKING TO STRANGERS garnered much attention. Carol Tavris, writing for the Wall Street Journal, described Gladwell as “an enjoyable raconteur, but a somewhat lazy researcher” so that for this particular book, it’s “often hard to find the chocolate in the trail mix.” TALKING TO STRANGERS did receive a starred review from Kirkus.