Take a photo of a barcode or cover
5.53k reviews for:
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know
Malcolm Gladwell
3.83 AVERAGE
5.53k reviews for:
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know
Malcolm Gladwell
3.83 AVERAGE
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
- History and case tidbits (how this book earned .25 stars)
- -100000000 stars for minimizing the crimes of rapists, making sweeping generalizations, victim blaming, and oversimplifying sexual assault issues
- General review: Man with ideas about the true nature of human beings uses anecdotal evidence to justify and package his opinions as facts with a lack of reflection on his own bias and a lack of exploration into alternate explanations for the patterns discussed, explanations that are more well documented and serve more constructively into a greater personal and social model of the human mind.
Once again I leave with the impression that Malcolm Gladwell has a superiority complex. This book is structured around unexamined intuitions backed with interesting historical cases, where the line between personal bias/opinion and fact is not drawn and even distorted to the authors benefit. I would not use this book to guide my thinking or life. I would not recommend this to anyone.
Not at all what I expected, but gave me a lot to think about
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Engaging book that made me think about my thoughts and notions of strangers and how I and others interact.
some interesting research, kind of confusing, but some take-aways i.e. humans tend to default to believing what people say, different cultures interpret facial expressions differently, police are taught to act as though people are lying and hiding something