A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago
Tribune, and Detroit Free Pres
Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author
of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful
examination of our interactions with strangers -- and why they often go
wrong.
How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville
Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual
assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the
way we relate to each other that isn't true?
While tackling these questions, Malcolm Gladwell was not solely writing
a book for the page. He was also producing for the ear. In the audiobook
version of Talking to Strangers, you'll hear the voices of people he
interviewed--scientists, criminologists, military psychologists. Court
transcripts are brought to life with re-enactments. You actually hear
the contentious arrest of Sandra Bland by the side of the road in Texas.
As Gladwell revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of
Amanda Knox, and the suicide of Sylvia Plath, you hear directly from
many of the players in these real-life tragedies. There's even a theme
song - Janelle Monae's "Hell You Talmbout."
Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies
we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know
how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding
in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.
