In July 2015, a young black woman named Sandra Bland was pulled over for a
minor traffic violation in rural Texas. Minutes later she was arrested and
jailed. Three days later, she committed suicide in her cell. What went
wrong? Talking to Strangersis all about what happens when we encounter
people we don't know, why it often goes awry, and what it says about us.
How do we make sense of the unfamiliar? Why are we so bad at judging
someone, reading a face, or detecting a lie? Why do we so often fail to
'get' other people? Through a series of puzzles, encounters and
misunderstandings, from little-known stories to infamous legal cases,
Gladwell takes us on a journey through the unexpected. You will read about
the spy who spent years undetected at the highest levels of the Pentagon,
the man who saw through the fraudster Bernie Madoff, the suicide of the
poet Sylvia Plath and the false conviction of Amanda Knox. You will
discover that strangers are never simple. No one shows us who we are like
Malcolm Gladwell. Here he sets out to understand why we act the way we do,
and how we all might know a little more about those we don't.