Book Review | Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell

Here is my take on this popular book by Malcolm Gladwell (MG).

MG, being MG, is a master story-teller and reading his books almost always feels like you are reading a novel, although the books are non-fiction.

How does he achieve this?

By telling stories.

When he wants to make an argument or prove a point, he always starts by telling story. For people like me, who read mainly non-fiction, reading his books feels a little light.

Although I like the use of stories to prove a point, as stories stay in memory much longer than abstract arguments, sometimes it might be too much.

So I argue that MG is suffering from story overdose.

This is not because he is telling too many stories, it's because he is telling a wide-variety of stories. He talks about terrorism, espionage, fraud, policing, just to make a point about talking to strangers.

And after reading 300 pages of stories, what did I learn from this book?

Not much to be honest.

The most useful books leave with 1-2 powerful ideas where you can remember and leverage in your life. The most valuable idea covered in this book is that, it is difficult to communicate with strangers.

For example, humans tend to default to truth, when trying to understand strangers. We don't question whether the other person is lying to us. Because if we questioned each interaction with a stranger, we wouldn't be able to build relationships and civilizations would not survive.

Something else I learned from this book is about how alcohol affects or body. Do you see how one of the most memorable things I learned has nothing to do with "talking to strangers"?

So what is up with alcohol?

I learned that humans always balance short and long term considerations. For example, if you are in a crowded bus and you can't breathe anymore, you can just get out of the bus and walk the remaining way. This will give you immediate benefit of fresh air.

However, you'll also end up getting home late, and you won't be able to sleep as long as you'd like to, which might affect your performance at work tomorrow.

So by weighing these short and long term considerations you make a decision.

Impulsive people value immediate short term benefits and ignore long-term considerations while prudent people tend to value long-term considerations higher.

Regardless of the personality though, everybody has a machine inside themselves that always weigh short and long term considerations whenever we need to take an action.

Well, alcohol inhibits the long-term considerations. For example, when you are drunk, you text your ex how much you missed her, ignoring the fact that what you do will feel embarrassing tomorrow.

So it is not that alcohol makes us dumb, aggressive, or empty headed, it just makes us less prudent.

By the same token, alcohol does not extract the "real self" from inside. It makes us less of ourselves, as long-term considering part of our brain is an essential part of ourselves. Humanity would collapse without it.

Who should read this book?

So if you are someone who likes reading stories, this book is for you, although there is not a lot of substance. Note that there is a lot of crime, torture related stories in the book so it might make you feel uncomfortable.

So next time you are on a long-haul flight, you can get this book as it doesn't require a lot of mental effort to follow through.

But this won't be a book that you'll end up revering and praising to your friends. At least, that wasn't the case with me.

Hope you enjoyed this review. Give this book a try and let me know what you think.