Very interesting read but I got a bit bored of it all to do with spies. I think this would have been better just talking about the topics rather than have a story and evaluating it based on his theories.

Gladwell tells a series of stories to illustrate his points. One of the most famous stories is the case of Sandra Bland, a black woman who was arrested by a white police officer in Texas in 2015. Bland was pulled over for a minor traffic violation, and the encounter quickly escalated. Bland was arrested and charged with resisting arrest, and she died in jail three days later.

Gladwell argues that Bland's death was a result of a misunderstanding between her and the police officer. He says that the officer misread Bland's body language and facial expressions, and that this led him to believe that she was a threat. Gladwell also argues that Bland herself misread the officer's intentions, and that this contributed to the escalation of the situation.

Gladwell uses the case of Sandra Bland to explore the challenges of understanding people we don't know. He says that we are all prone to making assumptions about people based on their appearance, their race, their gender, and other factors. These assumptions can lead us to misread people's intentions, and this can have serious consequences.

Talking to Strangers is a thought-provoking book that challenges us to think more critically about the way we interact with strangers. It is a timely book, given the current political and social climate in the United States. Gladwell's book is a reminder that we need to be more careful about how we judge people, and that we need to be more open to listening to and understanding those who are different from us.

Overall, Talking to Strangers is a thought-provoking book that is worth reading. It is a book that will make you think about the way you interact with strangers, and it will challenge you to be more open-minded and understanding.

I don't know what I expected from this book, but it was actually nothing like what I imagined. It is a very dry book with a lot of political commentary, and I didn't much enjoy it, I'm afraid.

All of Malcolm Gladwell's books do a good job of distilling quite complex subjects into immensely readable (or listenable) prose. The chapters on Amanda Knox, Sylvia Plath, and the Cuban spy were particularly illuminating. Well worth the read.

An interesting read that I'm glad to have discovered. I'll definitely be seeking out more by this author.

Gladwell is a keen writer and a good observer of human behaviour. In the past I have read Outliers, Blink, listened to his podcast.. so in general I think he has good grip of things.

This book has raised several questions, and is a book that seems to have a largely divided view

I would think readers should view this book again as a research project, and do their own deduction.

I didn’t really know what to expect from this book once I started reading. The books starts very differently in contrast with its title but gradually it picks and does complete justice to the start.
The book goes into some very interesting aspects of human nature like defaulting to truth mechanism which help us survive and trust each other as a group of social animals.
It about social experiments to understand the human behaviour, specially how we perceive strangers. In the modern connected world we encounter people from all backgrounds. Our perceptions are tailored through the media we consume and the books gives a brilliant example of how most American people judge a happy and a sad face by subconsciously comparing strangers emotions with the emotions of the characters in a famous American tv show called Friends.
It also goes into detail about how human behaviour can be coupled to their environment and if we change the environment the behaviour changes. This is very non intuitive for a normal person as we think everyone has a certain nature which cannot change.
The book ends by closing the loop that was opened with a story in the beginning and does justice to the story by putting all the facts about human behaviour when it comes to judging strangers in front of the reader.
I learnt a from this book personally and it has certainly tweaked my thinking. I will be a bit more informed about my behaviour when I encounter strangers in my own life. This book is a good investment for someone who encounters strangers everyday in their professional or personal life.

Gladwin presents a very interestimg look at human interactions and cause and effect.
I whether its right to put our trust on strangers and how doing so can lead people down dark paths and endings. This book is more about the journey throughout the pages rather than getting to the end. If you're in it for the end prepared to be disappointed.
The book looks into systematic misconduct and how things can go wrong. Although Gladwell still wants us to feel that lying is more rare than truth telling. I'm not sure the book sold me on that one but with a legal background I enjoyed reading.

Thanks netgalley and penguin books for the a digital advanced copy. All opinions in this review are mine and mine alone.

This is the first of Malcolm Gladwell’s books that I have read; I enjoyed it and will look to reading more of his others. I heard him on several podcasts discussing this one so I was already keen to read it. It is thought provoking and interesting, some sections more than others and I did think the ending was one of the weaker parts.

Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell is a feeble attempt to make sense of what goes wrong when we communicate with strangers. The author has put together a few anecdotes and then tried to make sense of what went wrong during the conversation among the strangers in question, thus trying hard to drive his point home.

Most of the conclusions he draws seem far fetched. In many cases, it appeared that he was trying to draw conclusions to suit his theory, conveniently skipping the parts that might hint at something totally opposite.

The only thing I liked about the book were the incidents themselves. There were quite many which I was not aware of. The book introduced me to them, thus leading me to do my on research on them to know more details about those stories.

Thanks to the author and the publisher for the ARC.

Verdict: Skip this one.

From the very first page this book will have you hooked and wanting to know why so many human interactions end up going so wrong.

This is a very impressive book based on many years of research that rethinks alot of the science and presents relevant anthropological findings to show that there is no one size fits all theory. It couldn't be more relevant to today.

I thoroughly enjoyed my pre-publication copy of Talking to Strangers. I was very keen to read another of Gladwell's books after I had enjoyed his anecdotal explanations in Outliers. I was happy to find that Talking to Strangers is also full of anecdotes supporting the major ideas and theories throughout the book. I sometimes find in psychology books that it is hard to relate the subject to my own life but the countless connections made to recent events makes Talking to Strangers easy to understand and hard to put down - I had it finished in a weekend! Highly recommended if you are looking to unravel the complexities of strangers and learn from the mistakes of others.

"Talking To Strangers" is one of the most interesting and insightful books I've ever read. Malcolm Gladwell has collated a variety of case studies to illustrate some extremely valuable lessons. I found it fascinating!

Thanks to NetGalley and The Publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Once again Gladwell confidently delivers an argument for why our assumptions are fundamentally flawed. In this case it's about why we are often taken in and too trusting of strangers because we 'default to truth'.

While I enjoyed reading the anecdotes and his spin on what these show and mean, I wasn't fully convinced that I agreed with him. And I also found it a bit jumbled and disjointed which reduced my overall reading experience.

Not my favourite Gladwell book but still fascinated by his a ability to persuade.

Very interesting, compelling and well written as other Gladwell books. I really enjoyed it.

His writing is very engaging, that makes a non fiction book enjoyable to read.

Thanks a lot to the publisher and NG for this copy.

First off all, thank you to the publishers for approving me and easing the quarantine boredom.

I'm sorry but this book simply did not land with me. There were some interesting points made and I even googled historical events I was less familiar with, (which is probably the only "productive" thing I've done in lockdown) but overall I actively disagreed with the points Gladwell made.

I felt like he was trying to force all of these separate incidents to prove a point but his point kept getting broader and vaguer as the book went on, precisely because these situations were so much more complicated than the box he tried to shove them in. He was basically simplifying heinous situations just to stamp "miscommunication!" all over them.

Unfortunately this pretty much led to him saying police brutality was due to two people failing to understand each other, Brock Turner raped his victim because of alcohol induced mixed signals, Jerry Sandusky abused children and got away with it for so long because people missed signs by "defaulting to truth" which is what happens when someone is faced with what was likely (a lovable man passionate about letting kids thrive) vs the impossible (a paedophile). The author sympathised with the people not clocking on sooner but those are the same people whose job it was to investigate this regardless of their own personal opinion. Adults turning a blind eye to a grown man "horsing around" with young vulnerable boys in locker room showers. Not a single raised eyebrow. A hard no from me.

I've heard good things about the author and it seems like a lot of people are saying this one is just a dud whilst his other books are absolutely worth reading so I might give those a go at some point. His writing was indeed engaging and had he made better arguments, I would have loved this book.

An enthralling and fascinating insight into human psychology told through numerous real life events. Gladwell captures the emotions of the people involved perfectly and brings you not only into their world but their emotions and thought processes. A wonderful read.

A tricky read with some tough subjects. I normally love Malcolm Gladwell and speed through his books, but this one took me some time to get through. Not one for me, but a very important read on some really messed up stuff. Especially our institutions and assumptions that have built them into a system that's not fair or just in some cases. Presume less, read more Gladwell.

Thank you to Netgalley for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Gladwell presents an interesting case here, but executes it in the worst of ways. The notion that humans ‘default to truth’ applies well in some cases: that one wouldn’t suspect a spy breaching the CIA, for example. However more often than not in Talking to Strangers the implications that abusers simply ‘default to truth’ and therefore shouldn’t be blamed for their behaviours is shocking to me. Understanding the psyche is one thing, not holding it accountable appropriately is another. A shame as some aspects of this book were really interesting, particularly behaviours being coupled to locations. Not the best mindset towards serious allegations and the victims affected by them.

I have read and enjoyed other works by Gladwell and his latest offering follows what has now become a familiar structure in his books. In the opening chapter, he starts with a case study which introduces the issue which will be addressed in the book. He then proceeds to divide it into smaller components, illustrating each of them with anecdotes or reference to experiments by social scientists. At the end of the book, Gladwell revisits the introductory case study, applying the insights obtained during the course of the previous chapters.

In Talking to Strangers the key case study is the notorious stand-off between African-American civilian Sandra Bland and police officer Brian Encina. On the pretext of a traffic violation, Bland was pulled over by Encina. What started as a fairly normal random check led to the arrest of an innocent woman and her subsequent suicide in a jail cell. Gladwell interprets this as an example of a gross misunderstanding, a failure on the part of Encina to correctly digest verbal and non-verbal communication. And, whilst not exonerating Encina, he considers this as a wider failure on the part of society to equip us with the necessary tools to understand “strangers”. Gladwell then gives other examples – such as Neville Chamberlain’s belief (shared by seasoned diplomats in his retinue) that Hitler would honour an agreement not to go to war, or the CIA’s failure to identify key double-agents in their midst. What is it, therefore that makes us prone to being fooled by strangers?

To answer this question, Gladwell relies heavily on the theories of psychologist Tim Levine. He argues that the first problem we face is what he calls “default to truth”. In other words, we are “wired” to accept the truth of what others are telling us, unless there are so many indications to the contrary that we cannot easily “explain them away”. This obviously puts us at a greater risk of being fooled now and then. However, the alternative to this approach would be to become paranoid, suspecting everything and everybody.
The second problem is related to “transparency”. We tend to rely on “visual” communication as much as on “non-visual” communication. Facial expressions, in particular, are often considered a fool proof method of understanding what others are really feeling. It turns out however that with certain people this just doesn’t work, and their facial expressions do not necessarily reflect their real thoughts. In particular, culture affects visual cues, compounding the transparency problem. Intrinsically tied to this is the “mismatch” issue. Basically, this means that whilst even reading the expressions of “transparent” people can be challenging at times, our performance is abysmal when expressions and thoughts are mismatched.

The final challenge in “talking to strangers” relates to the “coupling” phenomenon. Gladwell observes that we tend to underestimate the effects of “context” (geographical or circumstantial) on individuals, which leads us to wrongly predict how an individual would react or behave in specific circumstances.

Gladwell’s solution to these problems is, to my mind, quite generic. He emphasizes that we need to be aware of the tendency to “default to truth” and not penalize each other for it. He also advocates for greater humility and respect in our dealings with strangers, giving ourselves the time to understand not just the individual facing us, but also the “context”.

There’s no denying Gladwell’s readability – I gobbled up this book in two longish sittings over a weekend. His arguments move forward with a clear logic and are illustrated by compelling examples. He provides many startling insights and at his best, can effectively change one’s perceptions and prejudices. Yet, at the end, just as with other books of his, I felt rather like the audience at a magician’s show, convinced that there must be a “trick” somewhere. His conclusions are certainly persuasive – but can we be sure that he has not been selective in the anecdotes he shares with us? Can the social experiments he refers to be relied upon?

The dangers of relying blindly on the examples Gladwell mentions are illustrated, ironically, by the author himself. The interpretation of facial expressions was a key point in an earlier book of his – Blink – some of whose material overlaps with this. In Blink, following the findings of Paul Ekman, Gladwell advocated for a “universalist” interpretation of facial expressions. In Talking to Strangers he admits to changing his views on Ekman, in the light of more recent studies. There is, of course, nothing wrong with changing or developing one’s opinion – on the contrary, Gladwell should be commended for his intellectual honesty in making this clear. However, it also serves as a salutary lesson in not taking all Gladwell’s arguments as self-evident.

This “margin of error” (for want of a better term) is particularly delicate in the present book, since the examples Gladwell refers to are, to say the least, controversial. He contends, for instance, that in the Jerry Sandusky and Larry Nassar abuse scandals, the failure of authorities to take prompt action was not necessarily fuelled by some nefarious cover-up attempt, but might have been the result of a natural “default to truth”. Similarly, in discussing the Brock Turner rape case, whilst, on the one hand, condemning the perpetrator, he mentions the alcohol factor as an element which complicated the correct understanding of “consent” – effectively portraying the incident is a particularly grievous and damaging ‘misunderstanding’. Gladwell retains a respectful and balanced voice, but this is incendiary stuff. I’m quite sure that victims of abuse will not be easily convinced by these “default to truth” arguments, however compellingly put.

Whether one agrees or not with his overarching theories or their particular components, however, Gladwell comes across as an intelligent interlocutor whose observations are thought-provoking and valuable.

3.5*