Manchester District Library Book Club discussion

Please share your thoughts.

My Review:
This was a pretty fast read for a non-fiction book. Gladwell tells stories, even as he is citing studies and giving facts. As someone who has researched a topic for a long time and still not come to any grand conclusions I appreciate that Gladwell does not pretend to have the answer. He just wants to educate us so we can recognize our short comings and all appropriate questions in our minds. This preparedness will hopefully help us assess a situation better so progress can be made.

This was a thoughtful, accurate and most importantly succinct review. I try but can't seem to do it. Thanks.

My rather long Review:
I could give Talking to Strangers 5stars because I was pretty amazed. I didn't look forward to reading this (although it's been on my 'to read' list for a while) but I really liked it (4stars). It was more than I thought it would be. I was amazed at the sheer variety of examples he used to get his point across, which is "What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know".

I can't get into the specific incidents that Gladwell dove into but all involved at least one of these characteristics that he used to describe behavior:
1. Coupling: behaviors linked to specific conditions. Coupling teaches us to "not look at the stranger and jump to conclusions. Look at the stranger's world."
2. truth-default mode: we start by believing, we trust the person. There are some people who rarely trust anyone.
3. And I was impressed in the section on Transparency Assumption, especially, the Facial Action Coding System which uses the forty-three distinctive muscle movements in the face to identify emotions. Something the author pointed out and that I hadn't thought much about was how other cultures might interpret or misinterpret these same basic expressions.
As Gladwell summarizes , "We have people struggling with their first impressions of a stranger. We have people struggling when they have months to understand a stranger. We have people struggling when they meet with someone only once, and people struggling when they return to the stranger again and again. They struggle with assessing a stranger's honesty. They struggle with a stranger's character. They struggle with a stranger's intent. It's a mess."

As with most self-help reads, reguardless of mistakes I've made, I mostly feel that I already know these truths. But do I practice them? This is why, when it is well written, it is a joy and powerful to be reminded in a thought provoking and trustworthy manner. In the Notes/Bibliography it was important to see where the author drew his information and conclusions from. I think we can be pretty confident that the presentation of each of the incidents had been well researched. "It is a list of what I consider the most important of (my) sources. It is almost certainly the case that I have left some things out. Should you see anything that falls into that caategory or instances where I am plaainly in error, please contact me at lbpublicity.generic@hbgusa.com and I will be happy to correct the record." (I googled it and it is a real address for the Hatchett Book Group.)