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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For US folks... a Thanksgiving poem

My Thanksgiving

The autumn-time has come; on woods that dream of bloom,
And over purpling vines, the low sun fainter shines.
The aster-flower is failing, the hazel’s gold is paling;
Yet overhead more near the eternal Star appears!

And present gratitude insures the future’s good,
And for the things I see I trust the things to be;
That in the paths untrod, and the long days of God,
My feet shall still be led, my heart be comforted.

O living friends who love me! O dear ones gone above me!
Careless of other fame, I leave to you my name.
Hide it from idle praises, save it from evil phrases:
Why, when dear lips that spake it are dumb, should strangers wake it?

Let the thick curtain fall; I better know than all
How little I have gained, how vast the unattained.
Not by the page word-painted let life be banned or sainted:
Deeper than written scroll the colors of the soul.

Sweeter than any sung my songs that found no tongue;
Nobler than any fact my wish that failed of act.

Others shall sing the song, others shall right the wrong,—
Finish what I begin, and all I fail of win.
What matter, I or they? mine or another’s day,
So the right word be said and life the sweeter made?

Hail to the coming singers! Hail to the brave light-bringers!
Forward I reach and share all that they sing and dare.
The airs of heaven blow o’er me; a glory shines before me
Of what mankind shall be,— pure, generous, brave, and free.

A dream of man and woman Diviner but still human,
Solving the riddle old, shaping the Age of Gold!
The love of God and neighbor; an equal-handed labor;
The richer life, where beauty walks hand in hand with duty.

Ring, bells in unreared steeples, the joy of unborn peoples!
Sound, trumpets far off blown, your triumph is my own!
Parcel and part of all, I keep the festival,
Fore-reach the good to be, and share the victory.

I feel the earth move sunward, I join the great march onward,
And take, by faith, while living, my free hold of thanksgiving.

- John Greenleaf Whittier