Talking to Strangers

I began this book at the turn of the new year. 2024 had just arrived, and like many others I wanted to start off the year on a productive note. "Learning some new communication skills might be intriguing" I thought. So after finishing this book, how many new ways did I learn to talk to strangers? None. But that's okay.

This book is really about the contract we engage in when talking to new people. Malcolm Gladwell takes a deep dive into the question of "Why (and how) do things go wrong when we talk to strangers". He begins and ends the book with an examination of an encounter between a black woman and police officer. What should have been a simple traffic stop snowballs after misunderstandings accumulate into the death of the woman, Sandra Bland.

So why did this happen. Gladwell hands us several key insights that help explain why things go wrong, and he does it through the lens of scandals which make this book immensely enjoyable. Here are his key arguments:

This book was fascinating whirlwind through extreme social encounters that paint a picture of what happened to Sandra Bland. Gladwell closes by demonstrating how each factor contributed to Sandra's death. "But far more important than a little grace and humility over what we cannot do, we should be clear about what we can do... There are clues to making sense of the stranger. But attending to them requires humility and thoughtfulness and a willingness to look beyond the stranger, and take time and place and context into account.