Talking to Strangers

What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know

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Talking to Strangers

By: Malcolm Gladwell

Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell

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Brought to you by Penguin.

The highly anticipated new book from Malcom Gladwell, host of the chart-topping podcast Revisionist History.

With original archival interviews and musical scoring, this enhanced audiobook edition of Talking to Strangers brings Gladwell's renowned storytelling to life in his unparalleled narrating style.

The routine traffic stop that ends in tragedy. The spy who spends years undetected at the highest levels of the Pentagon. The false conviction of Amanda Knox. Why do we so often get other people wrong? Why is it so hard to detect a lie, read a face or judge a stranger's motives?

Through a series of encounters and misunderstandings - from history, psychology and infamous legal cases - Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual adventure into the darker side of human nature, where strangers are never simple and misreading them can have disastrous consequences.

No one challenges our shared assumptions like Malcolm Gladwell. Here he uses stories of deceit and fatal errors to cast doubt on our strategies for dealing with the unknown, inviting us to rethink our thinking in these troubled times.

(C) 2019 Malcolm Gladwell (P) 2019 Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm GladwellMalcolm GladwellPenguin

Communication & Social Skills

Personal Development

Psychology

Psychology & Mental Health

Social Psychology & Interactions

Sociology

Thought-Provoking

Inspiring

Health

Communication & Social Skills Personal Development Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Social Psychology & Interactions Sociology Thought-Provoking Inspiring Health

Critic reviews

I love this book . . . reading it will actually change not just how you see strangers, but how you look at yourself, the news - the world. Reading this book changed me.

Fascinating . . . you should read the book . . . He's tackling the dark side of human nature - what do we ever know about other people? (Sathnam Sanghera)

Now that practically everybody seems to be spoiling for a fight, I have found Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Strangers invaluable . . . His moral - to approach new people with caution and humility - has become my motto.

Taut, provocative, smart . . . Gladwell's cool, playful intelligence has made him one of our leading public thinkers

A book examining the ways we misinterpret or fail to communicate with one another could not feel more necessary . . . the page-turning urgency of a thriller (Chris Barton)

Superb writing. Masterful . . . bears all the marks that have made Gladwell one of the most successful non-fiction authors of his generation. (Pilita Clark)

A dazzling book . . . Gladwell is a rock star of nonfiction . . . ideas are slowly revealed until the reader arrives at a conclusion they didn't expect. Gladwell is advancing ideas and, sure, they are all open to challenge . . . but they are stimulating and convincing - and you won't regret a minute you spend mastering them

A wonderful provocation which Gladwell delivers like no other, an awakening to just one of the fascinations that lie in ordinary human experience . . . as ever, Gladwell's genius is in the telling.

Malcolm Gladwell made his name bringing intellectual sparkle to everyday subjects, and his new book - about how strangers talk to each other - is no exception. (Sean O’Hagan)

Most relevant

I have read a couple of Malcolm Gladwell's previous books and found them to be both entertaining and informative. Talking To Strangers is equally as good. We all think we are able to suss out strangers but what if they are lying to us? It seems we have an in built tendency to revert to truth i.e. believe them. Gladwell quotes some intriguing experiments including that of a computer programme that outperforms judges at predicting re-conviction rates based on raw data only, and Michael Levine's famous studies on observing and predicting cheats in a controlled experiment. These both demonstrate that humans are very poor indeed in assessing the intentions and trustworthiness of those they do not know and are too likely to rely on instinct regarding, for example, body language or stereotypes to make their assessments.
There are several high profile events that are considered through this book including the unfortunate case of Amanda Knox, the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Bernie Madoff fraud, Chamberlain's meetings with Hitler and even the US TV show Friends. The themes that emerge are consistent and that is that people are inherently willing to trust others and anticipate behaviour patterns and are surprised when the counterparty does not conform.
Like other works by Gladwell, this is thought provoking and intriguing and anyone reading (or listening) to this, will be quoting the stories for days. The Audible version of this book is excellent as it is read by Gladwell and has archive footages of some of the real events that are used for the base material of this book.