Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know

Gladwell, Malcolm

£10.99

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.

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Publish Date: 30/04/2020

Description

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

‘Compelling, haunting, tragic stories . . . resonate long after you put the book down’ James McConnachie, Sunday Times Book of the Year

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?

Using stories of deceit and fatal errors to cast doubt on our strategies for dealing with the unknown, 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.

Additional information

Weight 303 g
Dimensions 198 × 129 × 23 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

386

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

302 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K