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A review by mariawheeler
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell
1.0
“Don't look at the stranger and jump to conclusions. Look at the stranger's world.”
Going into this book, I was so excited. The thesis sounded intriguing and the audiobook had excellent production featuring voice recordings, student actors, and excerpts from other books. And, in the beginning, the book was promising.
I liked the historical tidbits we got when he talked about WWII, and I liked that he narrated the book personally. The first two sections of this book were enjoyable, but the last two parts are both dangerous and unscientific. Gladwell did an excellent job when discussing the default to truth theory, and I thought the experiments he referenced to support this theory (ie, The Milgram Obedience Experiment) to be really interesting. That's where my enjoyment ended. His assessments of the Brock Turner and Sandra Bland cases were so simplistic that it appeared as though he was watering down the gravity of the offences. Gladwell attempted to 'explain' some of these behaviours and then deduce the crime to 'miscommunication,' but the problem with this is that it came uncomfortably near to attempting to excuse these crimes.
I think Gladwell had good intentions, but instead of picking case studies that would truly support his theory, he chose those that would garner the greatest attention for him. It almost felt like he was using these victims' suffering and trying to align it with examples that just don't sit right with you if you know more details (that he left out) about the case.
A perfect example of good intentions gone wrong, don’t recommend.
1 ⭐
Going into this book, I was so excited. The thesis sounded intriguing and the audiobook had excellent production featuring voice recordings, student actors, and excerpts from other books. And, in the beginning, the book was promising.
I liked the historical tidbits we got when he talked about WWII, and I liked that he narrated the book personally. The first two sections of this book were enjoyable, but the last two parts are both dangerous and unscientific. Gladwell did an excellent job when discussing the default to truth theory, and I thought the experiments he referenced to support this theory (ie, The Milgram Obedience Experiment) to be really interesting. That's where my enjoyment ended. His assessments of the Brock Turner and Sandra Bland cases were so simplistic that it appeared as though he was watering down the gravity of the offences. Gladwell attempted to 'explain' some of these behaviours and then deduce the crime to 'miscommunication,' but the problem with this is that it came uncomfortably near to attempting to excuse these crimes.
I think Gladwell had good intentions, but instead of picking case studies that would truly support his theory, he chose those that would garner the greatest attention for him. It almost felt like he was using these victims' suffering and trying to align it with examples that just don't sit right with you if you know more details (that he left out) about the case.
A perfect example of good intentions gone wrong, don’t recommend.
1 ⭐