Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know

Gladwell weaves a few seemingly unrelated stories that have had a lot of impact in our society and have had media attention, and links them with a common thread many of us probably did not take into account. It certainly is not the ONLY explanation or problem as to what happened in those stories, but it is definitely a big part of it. That thread being, our belief that as humans we can read other humans on instinct. Simply put, we can not. However, we place a level of trust in everyone around us be default because if we didn’t we’d collapse as a society.

So the whole point of the book is to show examples of how we have become a society where we abandon trust, we believe that outward appearance is a reflection of someone’s intention, we are bad lie-detectors, and that behavior is usually linked to very specific circumstances and conditions. Some of this on paper seems obvious, but when you read, you start to unfold your eyes as you connect the dots between the different stories Gladwell chased. A lot of readers infer that he is excusing crimes with his conclusions here; however, I read this as a complimentary reason as to why these crimes occurred in the first place and that having the knowledge of them could help us prevent more.

While reading this book, I learned that a good many of my colleagues have a low opinion of Gladwell. I certainly don’t have a high or low opinion. So when I ask why they don’t like him, or this book, its because my colleagues say, “Well, he isn’t really saying anything profound” or “Anybody could write and research what he is describing here” or “It seems loose, like it’s not the whole thing.” I think Gladwell basically needed to make it more clear that his expression here is not a sole explanation for the stories and crimes that occurred and he examined, but rather a complimentary reason to many other aspects that led up to them.

With the right context, this book is brilliant. Considering that it doesn’t include that crucial context, it’s not near the ability of what it could be. Not Gladwell’s best work, and I think everyone needs to lower their expectation of Gladwell just a bit.