Talking to strangers: what we should know about the people we don't know

Table of contents:

Introduction: "Step out of the car!"

Part one: Spies and diplomats: two puzzles.
Fidel Castro's revenge ;
Getting to know der Führer

Part two: Default to truth.
The queen of Cuba ;
The holy fool ;
Case study:
The boy in the shower

Part three: Transparency.
The Friends fallacy ;
A (short) explanation of the Amanda Knox case ;
Case study: The fraternity party

Part four: Lessons.
KSM: what happens when the stranger is a terrorist?

Part five: Coupling. Sylvia Plath ;
Case study: The Kansas City experiments ;
Sandra Bland.

In July 2015, a young black woman named Sandra Bland was pulled over for a minor traffic violation in rural Texas. Minutes later she was arrested and jailed. Three days later, she committed suicide in her cell. What went wrong? Talking to Strangers is all about what happens when we encounter people we don't know, why it often goes awry, and what it says about us.

How do we make sense of the unfamiliar? Why are we so bad at judging someone, reading a face, or detecting a lie? Why do we so often fail to 'get' other people?

Through a series of puzzles, encounters and misunderstandings, from little-known stories to infamous legal cases, Gladwell takes us on a journey through the unexpected. You will read about the spy who spent years undetected at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the man who saw through the fraudster Bernie Madoff, the suicide of the poet Sylvia Plath and the false conviction of Amanda Knox. You will discover that strangers are never simple.

No one shows us who we are like Malcolm Gladwell. Here he sets out to understand why we act the way we do, and how we all might know a little more about those we don't.

https://www.penguin.com.au/books/talking-to-strangers-9780241351574