Talking to Strangers
⭐⭐⭐
Malcom Gladwell's writing is as clear, concise, and engaging as ever in Talking to Strangers. He strips each case he looks at down as much as possible to avoid overcomplication, and ensures at all times that he is driving towards a powerful story. While reading it I felt alternately validated and surprised by various conclusions, as his narration forced me to confront some of my own biases about how the world should work. For all that, it should get 5 stars.
However.
In Gladwell's effort to simplify and streamline, a lot gets left by the wayside. In his past works I was largely fine with that, as no introduction to a topic will ever be able to include all of the information. But in Talking to Strangers Gladwell focuses specifically on horrible, horrible moments in
recent history and digs into what went wrong to allow them to happen. As he reduces each encounter to the bare bones he ends up stripping away a little too much of the human emotion, leaving us with descriptors like "things go badly awry" (pg.190) when discussing the attackers actions in a sexual assault case. Is that technically accurate? Yes. But it feels borderline disrespectful to describe it that way. In many other chapters, Gladwell will briefly describe the perpetrator and the victim(s) for each encounter, but then go on to focus on who he seems to believe are the real victims - the bystanders who noticed something wasn't right and didn't do anything to step in or follow up. His logical conclusions about what drives people's behavior seem well supported and are likely accurate, but the consistent emphasis on why we should feel sympathetic to bystanders or cops who made the wrong choice in the moment seemed like at best a distraction from the overall point.
Gladwell's final conclusion also frustrated me. He carefully lays out the fact that humans are hardwired to believe one another, that when police are trained not to trust people we end up with dangerous and tragic circumstances. He shows us studies that indicate that police are focusing their efforts on ineffective solutions, and that just increasing police presence does not make society safer. In short, he makes an incredible case for why we should be focusing on reforming police departments and redirecting more resources to measures that actually can prevent crime, such as improved social safety nets and better access to mental health services. (This is often shortened to the phrase 'defund the police'.) Instead, he somehow came to the conclusion that police departments apparently just need more training and more money. I was shocked and honestly disappointed. I'll still read his work as he continues to write in future, but more than anything else this book served as a good reminder why anytime we read something, we need to take it with a grain of salt and remember that every author is working within the constraints of their own subconscious biases and lived experience.
I paired this with a Nitro Milk Stout from Left Hand Brewing. Its an exquisitely crafted stout with aromas of roasted coffee, milk chocolate, brown sugar and vanilla cream. I hate it. (It didn’t go to waste! I always make sure my partner is willing to drink anything I want to use that I won’t like.) As much as I want to I’ve never been able to acquire a taste for stouts, but I know that the people who like the Nitro Milk Stout love it. The love/hate dichotomy seemed like a fitting pairing with a Gladwell book. (And my partner definitely needed the drink after I’d finished my rant about the book’s conclusion.)
