Talking to strangers (a review)

 Here's my Goodread's review of this most excellent book by Malcolm Gladwell.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43848929-talking-to-strangers" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1549393502l/43848929._SX98_.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43848929-talking-to-strangers">Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1439.Malcolm_Gladwell">Malcolm Gladwell</a><br/>

My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4470996472">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />

This started and never stopped in grabbing my interest. A non-fiction account of missteps by so many including judges and policemen, by board members on Wall Street and friends of famous poets. What is matching? What is a mismatch? And what about coupling having nothing to do with marriage partners... all this is unpacked by Gladwell in a very easy-to-read compilation of our getting things wrong in our judging others. <br /><br />Included are detailed stories of spies like the Queen of Cuba, of Hitler and Neville Chamberlain, of the encounter of Montezuma and Cortes (if that even happened), Bernie Madoff, George Floyd (in the new afterward since 2020), Sylvia Plath, Sandra Bland, the folly at Penn State and the fallout of the scandals there. The book's illustrations are endless about the ways we misjudge people, especially strangers. <br /><br />The three theses of 1) default to truth (really should be default to belief), 2) human transparency (as if that were possible and easy to read) and 3) coupling all help us see how we get it wrong so very often. <br /><br />The stories are more than illustrations to bolster his points; they speak deeply to a human heart. May it be in your life you will hear and grapple with your own biases and wrongs. God will take it from there.

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