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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
I enjoyed this book and like all Malcolm Gladwell books I had a few "A Ha" moments based on his insight. I feel more aware and well informed about how human behavior makes unpredictable outcomes seem less mysterious.
This book starts out with a story of a traffic stop gone awry and then it subsequently breaks down the human behaviors of default to truth, transparency, and coupling meant to make sense of the tragic outcome. While the structure of the book is straightforward it's easy to get lost in the anecdotes and wonder, "wait how does this connect to the traffic stop?" However, each anecdote explaining the human behaviors is interesting in its own right so it is easy to move past it. I will say he chooses some very dark topics such as child abuse, torture, and suicide and I wasn't always excited to pick this book up again. In the end, Malcolm Gladwell wraps it up nicely, but I keep wondering how he could have kept everything more connected.
I also am curious to go back and read Blink. Some of the topics like default to truth seem to fit with Blink's thesis, but I wonder if the concept of transparency is the exact opposite of the Blink theory. Things to think about.
This book starts out with a story of a traffic stop gone awry and then it subsequently breaks down the human behaviors of default to truth, transparency, and coupling meant to make sense of the tragic outcome. While the structure of the book is straightforward it's easy to get lost in the anecdotes and wonder, "wait how does this connect to the traffic stop?" However, each anecdote explaining the human behaviors is interesting in its own right so it is easy to move past it. I will say he chooses some very dark topics such as child abuse, torture, and suicide and I wasn't always excited to pick this book up again. In the end, Malcolm Gladwell wraps it up nicely, but I keep wondering how he could have kept everything more connected.
I also am curious to go back and read Blink. Some of the topics like default to truth seem to fit with Blink's thesis, but I wonder if the concept of transparency is the exact opposite of the Blink theory. Things to think about.
I like Malcom Gladwell and most everything he writes and his podcast. This did not disappoint. Very interesting perspective. Abrupt ending made me want more. But I think that’s part of the point, actually. Definitely food for thought and a good read.
There is not as strong a thesis here as in some of this other books; it feels like unrelated anecdotes strung together. But all the anecdotes are interesting. The chapter on campus sexual assault felt clunky and poorly thought out. The chapter on police brutality, centered on the death in custody of Sandra Bland, may have under-rated racism as a factor but its exploration of how police training leads them into inefficient and unnecessarily adversarial traffic stops that then have the potential to escalate fills in a piece of the puzzle that isn't getting much media attention.
And Gladwell is an engaging storyteller with a very listen-able voice, and I enjoyed the format of using his interview tapes rather than himself reading what other people said, and even of having court transcripts read by actors. Very immersive.
And Gladwell is an engaging storyteller with a very listen-able voice, and I enjoyed the format of using his interview tapes rather than himself reading what other people said, and even of having court transcripts read by actors. Very immersive.
medium-paced
Some parts are interesting but there are a few case studies like Bland/Sandusky/Nassar/Turner where Gladwell over generalizes them and sums up that basically these things happen or weren’t caught soon enough because of what he calls “humans default to truth” and inability to read body language correctly. This completely ignores systemic sexism, racism, and classism which drastically determined how all of these cases were processed and how/when someone finally stepped in to investigate/prosecute them. In the Nassar case alone many of the girls parents struggled to believe THEIR OWN DAUGHTERS simply because they were young girls. Society undermines and discounts the word of women especially young girls! In the death of Sandra Bland she had racism and sexism stacked against her and was instantly profiled by the cop because he felt she wasn’t human and he could treat her with cruelty! Gladwell does not address these deep deep systemic issues and cruelties or really even consider them as reasons for why these cases were handled so poorly and why these horrible crimes (though Gladwell often implies a tone that they’re “misunderstandings”) happen in the first place.
Here is an example, at one point Gladwell quotes that young men are getting a distorted message that drinking excess is a harmless social exercise but the real message should be when you lose the ability to be responsible for yourself you drastically increase the chances you’ll commit a sexual crime. He states he isn’t saying alcohol is an excuse but the conclusion he draws from the given antidotes largely reaffirms that he does believe alcohol is an excuse. In the cited study students were asked what measures would be most effective in reducing sexual assault. The responses were harsher punishment, self defense, teaching men to respect women, with only a small amount saying it would be effective if they drank less. Gladwell says these students hold contradictory positions because in most campus sexual assault cases the man is drunk, so for instance women thinking men should respect them more is not an issue when said dude is sober only when drunk and have been transformed by alcohol. Thus, the solution is to teach men to respect women AND drink less. Gladwell tries to be like oh here is my caveat statement “i don't think alcohol is an excuse” then just doubles down on giving men the excuse that alcohol is the problem in his summations of the evidence he presents. He’s doing a lot of subverting/distorting of the studies and quotes to make his flawed point seem valid. To make it worse he even has a quote from the book Know My Name where Chanel Miller says word for word its not an alcohol issue its a respect/societal issue with how men view women. He read that quote and then came up with the conclusion its still alcohol’s fault 🫣I would argue these men would do it sober or drunk. Alcohol doesn’t change whether a man is a sexual predator or not. What would change it (to just begin) is very harsh punishments and not spinning the narrative that men have power/control over women and that we are subhuman to them—looking at you christianity! So what Gladwell effectively does in chapter 8 is reaffirm that if a man is drunk the alcohol is to blame for him committing sexual assault all while undermining Chanel Miller.
Gladwell says repeatedly the world is a pretty honest place and most people are telling the truth which stems from his whole default to truth theory. Yet I would ask is it? Is the world pretty honest? because in the west, especially, the foundation of many societies are built on the backs of slaves and the theft of indigenous land, yet people go to great lengths to conceal that truth. Laws and even layouts of cities and suburbs (read Color Law to learn more) are directly based on marginalization. I don’t buy the whole theory behind this book and don’t think Gladwell gave sufficient evidence or connected dots in such a way to prove his theory. I guess if you suspend knowledge of critical societal issues and just boil it down to our inability to accurately interpret the behavior and intentions of strangers can lead to dangerous outcomes then…yeah sure maybe it makes sense 🧐🤨. But I think in many of these cases, especially Bland’s, the handling and outcome stems from an inherent lack of empathy for the victims because they are deemed the “other,” the deep rooted culture of placing individual wants over the communal needs which allows people to justify cruelty to get what they want, and the sick display of superiority that results from privilege or ones perceived notion that they are…all leading to the world being a pretty dishonest and selfish place.
The massive over generalizations Gladwell makes minimizes crimes of rape, assault, and racism. After writing this all down I’m thinking it it should probably get negative stars!
Here is an example, at one point Gladwell quotes that young men are getting a distorted message that drinking excess is a harmless social exercise but the real message should be when you lose the ability to be responsible for yourself you drastically increase the chances you’ll commit a sexual crime. He states he isn’t saying alcohol is an excuse but the conclusion he draws from the given antidotes largely reaffirms that he does believe alcohol is an excuse. In the cited study students were asked what measures would be most effective in reducing sexual assault. The responses were harsher punishment, self defense, teaching men to respect women, with only a small amount saying it would be effective if they drank less. Gladwell says these students hold contradictory positions because in most campus sexual assault cases the man is drunk, so for instance women thinking men should respect them more is not an issue when said dude is sober only when drunk and have been transformed by alcohol. Thus, the solution is to teach men to respect women AND drink less. Gladwell tries to be like oh here is my caveat statement “i don't think alcohol is an excuse” then just doubles down on giving men the excuse that alcohol is the problem in his summations of the evidence he presents. He’s doing a lot of subverting/distorting of the studies and quotes to make his flawed point seem valid. To make it worse he even has a quote from the book Know My Name where Chanel Miller says word for word its not an alcohol issue its a respect/societal issue with how men view women. He read that quote and then came up with the conclusion its still alcohol’s fault 🫣I would argue these men would do it sober or drunk. Alcohol doesn’t change whether a man is a sexual predator or not. What would change it (to just begin) is very harsh punishments and not spinning the narrative that men have power/control over women and that we are subhuman to them—looking at you christianity! So what Gladwell effectively does in chapter 8 is reaffirm that if a man is drunk the alcohol is to blame for him committing sexual assault all while undermining Chanel Miller.
Gladwell says repeatedly the world is a pretty honest place and most people are telling the truth which stems from his whole default to truth theory. Yet I would ask is it? Is the world pretty honest? because in the west, especially, the foundation of many societies are built on the backs of slaves and the theft of indigenous land, yet people go to great lengths to conceal that truth. Laws and even layouts of cities and suburbs (read Color Law to learn more) are directly based on marginalization. I don’t buy the whole theory behind this book and don’t think Gladwell gave sufficient evidence or connected dots in such a way to prove his theory. I guess if you suspend knowledge of critical societal issues and just boil it down to our inability to accurately interpret the behavior and intentions of strangers can lead to dangerous outcomes then…yeah sure maybe it makes sense 🧐🤨. But I think in many of these cases, especially Bland’s, the handling and outcome stems from an inherent lack of empathy for the victims because they are deemed the “other,” the deep rooted culture of placing individual wants over the communal needs which allows people to justify cruelty to get what they want, and the sick display of superiority that results from privilege or ones perceived notion that they are…all leading to the world being a pretty dishonest and selfish place.
The massive over generalizations Gladwell makes minimizes crimes of rape, assault, and racism. After writing this all down I’m thinking it it should probably get negative stars!
This book is not about talking to strangers. It’s a collection of news stories that seem to have little in common other than that they interested Gladwell, including Bernie Madoff, Amanda Knox, Sandra Bland, Nassar and the women’s gymnastics team, Sandusky, a Taliban warrior interrogated by the US, Hitler meeting Neville Chamberlain, Sylvia Plath suicide, a Cuban spy who worked for the CIA, Brock Turner... essentially, scandal bait.
A better title for the book would be “default to truth” since this is the phrase he coins and uses repeatedly throughout the book, to a point it becomes grating to hear the phrase. Meaning, do we default to assuming people are telling the truth or not.
The best part of the book was learning more about some of these stories that I hadn’t spent much time with. I also appreciated learning about “coupling” as it relates to suicide methods and police hyperactivity. The worst part was his attempts at analysis, which often seem to be making excuses for the wrong people.
For example, in the Ana Montes Cuban spy story, he has an interview with a CIA agent to whom suspicions about Montes’ double agency were reported. In Gladwell’s interview, the piggish agent repeatedly talks about her sexy legs (“I’m a leg man”), how it felt like they were flirting in his interrogation, you get the picture. The agent dismisses her, and she continues to spy for years, until she’s caught by someone else. I was expecting Gladwell to come at this with the obvious analysis that this agent was an idiot who let his dick conduct the interrogation, but he never does. Instead he spouts some garbage about how this agent “defaulted to truth” which is understandable. WHAT. Why didn’t this agent get fired.
Similarly, he tries to push sympathy for Paterno and Spiers for not taking the pedophilia reports against Sandusky seriously, because they “defaulted to truth,” and seems to imply that college drinking culture is to blame for rape victims rather than the men committing the crimes.
His analyses are weak and the ultimate conclusion he draws is that we all should “default to truth” because the consequences of not doing so are too high (here he cites the Sandra Bland incident and that the cop assumed she was not telling the truth? Though that really wasn’t the crux of that incident at all)...despite having just written a whole book with many stories where “defaulting to truth” had the worst possible consequences for many victim including rape (Brock Turner case), child sexual abuse (Sandusky and Nassar cases), financial ruin (Madoff case), death of CIA agents and refugee rescuers (Montes case), and oh yeah, THE HOLOCAUST.
If this was written by someone other than Malcolm Gladwell, I wonder if it would been published.
A better title for the book would be “default to truth” since this is the phrase he coins and uses repeatedly throughout the book, to a point it becomes grating to hear the phrase. Meaning, do we default to assuming people are telling the truth or not.
The best part of the book was learning more about some of these stories that I hadn’t spent much time with. I also appreciated learning about “coupling” as it relates to suicide methods and police hyperactivity. The worst part was his attempts at analysis, which often seem to be making excuses for the wrong people.
For example, in the Ana Montes Cuban spy story, he has an interview with a CIA agent to whom suspicions about Montes’ double agency were reported. In Gladwell’s interview, the piggish agent repeatedly talks about her sexy legs (“I’m a leg man”), how it felt like they were flirting in his interrogation, you get the picture. The agent dismisses her, and she continues to spy for years, until she’s caught by someone else. I was expecting Gladwell to come at this with the obvious analysis that this agent was an idiot who let his dick conduct the interrogation, but he never does. Instead he spouts some garbage about how this agent “defaulted to truth” which is understandable. WHAT. Why didn’t this agent get fired.
Similarly, he tries to push sympathy for Paterno and Spiers for not taking the pedophilia reports against Sandusky seriously, because they “defaulted to truth,” and seems to imply that college drinking culture is to blame for rape victims rather than the men committing the crimes.
His analyses are weak and the ultimate conclusion he draws is that we all should “default to truth” because the consequences of not doing so are too high (here he cites the Sandra Bland incident and that the cop assumed she was not telling the truth? Though that really wasn’t the crux of that incident at all)...despite having just written a whole book with many stories where “defaulting to truth” had the worst possible consequences for many victim including rape (Brock Turner case), child sexual abuse (Sandusky and Nassar cases), financial ruin (Madoff case), death of CIA agents and refugee rescuers (Montes case), and oh yeah, THE HOLOCAUST.
If this was written by someone other than Malcolm Gladwell, I wonder if it would been published.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I feel like everyone should read this book. Powerful insights to understanding others… and the misunderstandings that can alter our exchanges and assumptions about strangers.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual assault, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Police brutality
Minor: Death, Gun violence
informative