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5.51k reviews for:
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don‰ЫЄt Know
Malcolm Gladwell
3.83 AVERAGE
5.51k reviews for:
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don‰ЫЄt Know
Malcolm Gladwell
3.83 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
medium-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Makes you re-think on how our assumptions on how people react or act can be wrong.
challenging
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
This felt reminiscent of Blink, both in the way that I enjoyed it thoroughly and found it enlightening, and that the topic itself is essentially an expansion on Blink. I do think this felt less revolutionary than Blink to me, but Gladwell’s reflections still feel incredibly important and the way he can connect so many different cases and topics is so interesting to read. Can’t wait to read more from him.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative
medium-paced
I found myself more interested in the case studies and stories portion than in Gladwell’s assessment of them. I think he chose interesting studies and events that kept me engaged but his analysis and relation to “talking to strangers” did not really cohesively come together.
I would rate this higher but I think he also took sensitive and tragic events and trivialized them, reducing them to “miscommunications”. He uses testimonies as evidence to prove points about perspectives, not taking into account that these are people accused of a crime and therefore have every reason to make up a narrative that gets them out of trouble. Yet he uses their recounting as factual thought process.
This man also seems to know nothing about transportation safety. Medians save lives.
I would rate this higher but I think he also took sensitive and tragic events and trivialized them, reducing them to “miscommunications”. He uses testimonies as evidence to prove points about perspectives, not taking into account that these are people accused of a crime and therefore have every reason to make up a narrative that gets them out of trouble. Yet he uses their recounting as factual thought process.
This man also seems to know nothing about transportation safety. Medians save lives.
I am so happy to see so many other low star reviews. I am usually a fan of Gladwell's, and a devoted listener of his podcast. When he released one chapter of this book as a podcast episode, I was so intrigued. Reading the book in full was so disappointing. I came away from many of his takeaways of recent scandals thinking "I thought he was better than that". It felt like the singular thesis of the book (the search for the truth) lead Gladwell to make some very disappointing and narrow-minded points. His new approach to creating the audiobook was engaging, but not enough to reduce the more disheartening contents of the book.
It was interesting how Gladwell broke down a single case to shed light on the complexities of human interaction. All in all, I'm not entirely sure what to take from the book— other than the thought that maybe we're all just trying to figure out how to co-exist on this planet. And no one really has the answers.
A lot of food for thought.
(February 2025)
A lot of food for thought.
(February 2025)