Last Updated on December 27, 2020
Resident Charles Tucker will review Talking to Strangers What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell [New York: Little Brown, 2019] on Tuesday, November 17, 2020 at 7 PM on TV 972.
Our “new normal” book reviews will continue on Channel 972 until it is safe to convene a larger group in the auditorium. This review will air in November when program scheduling permits.
Malcolm Gladwell, the prolific author and observer of social behavior, has written his sixth bestseller, which he has called his most taxing work. The focus of this nonfiction work is why interactions with strangers go awry.
The theme underlying his many case studies is that factors that help us in our close personal relationships are not always useful in relating to strangers; in fact, they can be problematic. The first three major sections are organized around some examples of this theme:
Spies and Diplomats is the heading of a discussion of Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler, among others, as an example of faulty understanding between people with totally different perspectives and assumptions. Default to Truth, the tendency to believe rather than distrust in ambiguous circumstances discusses Bernie Madoff and Harry Markopolos and Michael McQuery and Jerry Sandusky and others. Transparency, the assumption that superficial cues are accurate, contains a detailed review of the Amanda Knox case, as one example.
Gladwell begins and ends the book with dialogue from the Sandra Bland case, which was a major catalyst for writing this book. Many of the lively case examples contain verbatim exchanges. In fact, his audio book contains interview material from these conversations. As in all of his writing, extensive research and details are included.
Malcolm Gladwell is widely known for his bestsellers, beginning with The Tipping Point. He also has a podcast Revisionist History and is a staff writer for The New Yorker. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in history. He was recently named one of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers.
Charles Tucker, a Professor Emeritus of University of South Carolina, has lived at Charlestown with his wife Sondra for 12 years and is very active in the community. He has presented several book reviews on diverse topics, including a thorough review of Malcolm Gladwell’s work.
Janet Neer and Jane Backstrom, Book Review Coordinators