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branomander 's review for:
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know
by Malcolm Gladwell
2.5/5. Talking to Strangers is a sometimes fun and interesting read, but it lacks depth, starts off slow, has a misleading title, and fumbles its handling of sensitive issues.
Unfortunately, I am woefully uneducated in psychology. I am completely unaware of the current scientific consensus regarding the views espoused in this book. So, I will only be able to review this book on its own merits. I'll start with what I liked. For one, I thought this book was more cohesive and unified than the other Gladwell book I read, Outliers. Talking to Strangers had more development and structure to its argument. It felt more inspired. Outliers had an overarching theme, but Talking to Strangers did to a larger extent and I think this adds to the book's memorability and enjoyability. I don't mean to say that its cohesion was perfect, but I think it is better than Outliers.
I am on an everlasting quest to challenge my opinions, and Talking to Strangers did that to a large degree. According to Gladwell, there is something fundamentally wrong in how we understand and make sense of personal interactions. Almost every chapter in this book is dedicated to dispelling some myth of folk psychology, and I have to confess that much of what I thought about the world conflicted with the information I received. I loved this. He always cited studies and cemented their conclusions with stories that more (often less) resemble the study in question. This is easily the best part of the book and never failed to provoke a new line of thought. As I'll discuss later, though, this isn't flawless.
Gladwell is an incredibly engaging and generally careful writer. He's great at drawing me into topics that I wouldn't normally care about. Many sensitive topics are explored in this book, and he usually handled them with care and paid careful consideration to nuances. Which you'd expect, since his goal was to challenge typical ways of thought. Unfortunately, I think he sacrificed a lot of depth for the sake of easy conveyance. I won't pretend like I was constantly wanting more information, but there were times where I was surprised that an idea wasn't explored more. In a book like this, any hint of superficiality is unwelcome.
I mentioned above that he gave careful attention to nuances, but in some instances he probably went too far. There are multiple sections regarding sexual violence, and he challenges the typical narrative surrounding these cases. Obviously this will conjure controversy, but some of the other reviewers portray Gladwell as some kind of sexual assault apologist, and I don't think that's true at all. That said, I think its an easy misconception to have given how much time Gladwell spends exploring the mindsets of the aggressors and the confounding factors in the cases that he covers. His argument got pretty muddled here and he didn't convey it as clearly and carefully as he could have. There are also some pretty uncomfortable descriptions in here, regarding a certain Penn State Coach and Gymnastics Doctor, and if that is something you'd rather avoid, definitely skip this book.
This relates to another issue that I've seen raised, which is that Gladwell makes too many blanket generalizations and uses sketchy science to support his argument. I can't comment too much on the outright validity of the science, but he does only give one or two experiments in support of his findings and almost never addresses criticisms, which I am sure exist. For all I know, these findings could have been completely disputed long ago, or only exist on the fringes of academia. The stories he uses to prop up his case are usually clearly related to the topic, but sometimes tenuously linked at best. This is especially bad in the first part, and the sexual assault section.
Also, this book absolutely shouldn't be called Talking To Strangers. It is tangentially related to that, of course, but I was under the impression that this would be more of a self-help book and it really isn't. Only a small amount of this could be practically applied to a normal life. I am a pretty awkward person, and I wanted to read some tips on interpersonal relationships, especially with people you don't already know. I don't think this is an unfair desire for the book, since Talking to Strangers is often recommended as a self-help book, and it comes up if you Google search "self help books talking".
Finally, I think the beginning was quite weak. It wasn't boring exactly, but I mentioned that I liked how cohesive the book was, and this is certainly in spite of the first fifth or so. That part felt like an assortment of mostly unrelated stories. They were given further context by the rest of the book, but they still lacked the unification that I felt in the later parts.
Talking to Strangers is an interesting and engaging book, but will probably only satisfy people with a casual interest in psychology or sociology. It's almost useless as a self-help book, since most of what Gladwell advocates for are basically just policy decisions. Its fun and cool but leaves something to be desired. It generalizes frequently, selectively uses evidence, and mishandles some very dark topics.
Unfortunately, I am woefully uneducated in psychology. I am completely unaware of the current scientific consensus regarding the views espoused in this book. So, I will only be able to review this book on its own merits. I'll start with what I liked. For one, I thought this book was more cohesive and unified than the other Gladwell book I read, Outliers. Talking to Strangers had more development and structure to its argument. It felt more inspired. Outliers had an overarching theme, but Talking to Strangers did to a larger extent and I think this adds to the book's memorability and enjoyability. I don't mean to say that its cohesion was perfect, but I think it is better than Outliers.
I am on an everlasting quest to challenge my opinions, and Talking to Strangers did that to a large degree. According to Gladwell, there is something fundamentally wrong in how we understand and make sense of personal interactions. Almost every chapter in this book is dedicated to dispelling some myth of folk psychology, and I have to confess that much of what I thought about the world conflicted with the information I received. I loved this. He always cited studies and cemented their conclusions with stories that more (often less) resemble the study in question. This is easily the best part of the book and never failed to provoke a new line of thought. As I'll discuss later, though, this isn't flawless.
Gladwell is an incredibly engaging and generally careful writer. He's great at drawing me into topics that I wouldn't normally care about. Many sensitive topics are explored in this book, and he usually handled them with care and paid careful consideration to nuances. Which you'd expect, since his goal was to challenge typical ways of thought. Unfortunately, I think he sacrificed a lot of depth for the sake of easy conveyance. I won't pretend like I was constantly wanting more information, but there were times where I was surprised that an idea wasn't explored more. In a book like this, any hint of superficiality is unwelcome.
I mentioned above that he gave careful attention to nuances, but in some instances he probably went too far. There are multiple sections regarding sexual violence, and he challenges the typical narrative surrounding these cases. Obviously this will conjure controversy, but some of the other reviewers portray Gladwell as some kind of sexual assault apologist, and I don't think that's true at all. That said, I think its an easy misconception to have given how much time Gladwell spends exploring the mindsets of the aggressors and the confounding factors in the cases that he covers. His argument got pretty muddled here and he didn't convey it as clearly and carefully as he could have. There are also some pretty uncomfortable descriptions in here, regarding a certain Penn State Coach and Gymnastics Doctor, and if that is something you'd rather avoid, definitely skip this book.
This relates to another issue that I've seen raised, which is that Gladwell makes too many blanket generalizations and uses sketchy science to support his argument. I can't comment too much on the outright validity of the science, but he does only give one or two experiments in support of his findings and almost never addresses criticisms, which I am sure exist. For all I know, these findings could have been completely disputed long ago, or only exist on the fringes of academia. The stories he uses to prop up his case are usually clearly related to the topic, but sometimes tenuously linked at best. This is especially bad in the first part, and the sexual assault section.
Also, this book absolutely shouldn't be called Talking To Strangers. It is tangentially related to that, of course, but I was under the impression that this would be more of a self-help book and it really isn't. Only a small amount of this could be practically applied to a normal life. I am a pretty awkward person, and I wanted to read some tips on interpersonal relationships, especially with people you don't already know. I don't think this is an unfair desire for the book, since Talking to Strangers is often recommended as a self-help book, and it comes up if you Google search "self help books talking".
Finally, I think the beginning was quite weak. It wasn't boring exactly, but I mentioned that I liked how cohesive the book was, and this is certainly in spite of the first fifth or so. That part felt like an assortment of mostly unrelated stories. They were given further context by the rest of the book, but they still lacked the unification that I felt in the later parts.
Talking to Strangers is an interesting and engaging book, but will probably only satisfy people with a casual interest in psychology or sociology. It's almost useless as a self-help book, since most of what Gladwell advocates for are basically just policy decisions. Its fun and cool but leaves something to be desired. It generalizes frequently, selectively uses evidence, and mishandles some very dark topics.