Author:
Gladwell, Malcolm, 1963- author.
Edition Statement:First edition.
ImprintNew York : Little, Brown and Company, 2019.
Imprint2019
Descriptionxii, 386 pages : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm
Note:Introduction: "Step out of the car!" -- Part one. Spies and diplomats: two puzzles -- Fidel Castro's revenge -- Getting to know der Führer -- Part two. Default to truth -- The queen of Cuba -- The holy fool -- Case study: The boy in the shower -- Part three. Transparency -- The Friends fallacy -- A (short) explanation of the Amanda Knox case -- Case study: The fraternity party -- Part four. Lessons -- KSM: what happens when the stranger is a terrorist? -- Part five. Coupling -- Sylvia Plath -- Case study: The Kansas City experiments -- Sandra Bland.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Note:In this thoughtful treatise spurred by the 2015 death of African-American academic Sandra Bland in jail after a traffic stop, New Yorker writer Gladwell (The Tipping Point) aims to figure out the strategies people use to assess strangers--to "analyze, critique them, figure out where they came from, figure out how to fix them," in other words: to understand how to balance trust and safety. He uses a variety of examples from history and recent headlines to illustrate that people size up the motivations, emotions, and trustworthiness of those they don't know both wrongly and with misplaced confidence.
