Library: Professional Development Committee: 2021-2022

PDC articles of interest

Talking to Strangers by Malcom Gladwell

Book discussion led by Dr. Renee Bryzik.

11am - 1pm, Friday, April 22, 2022

Book availability:

A print copy of the book is available in the SC4 library.
It is also available in multiple formats at the St. Clair County Public Library: print, large print, ebook, audiobook through Overdrive, audiobook through Hoopla, and CD.
Because of publisher licensing rules, the book is not available in an ebook format through the SC4 library.

Please join us for a lively discussion of Talking to Strangers moderated by Dr. Renee Bryzik. Much of the book consists of case studies where humans have profoundly misjudged the character of others. The CIA, FEC, judges and a university president all do what Gladwell, following sociologist Tim Levine, calls “default to truth”: they believe what the person under scrutiny says. Gladwell also shows instances where persistent skepticism is undesirable.

As you read, consider the following:

What do you take away from these accounts?
What should we do when we are placed in positions of judgement that would affect the academic or professional lives of our students and colleagues?
Have you had issues with the way you communicate with faculty or students since the increase in Zoom/Teams meetings or email correspondence?
Have you had issues with misunderstanding students which led you to rethink some classroom policies?
Is there anything about Gladwell’s book that inspires you to rethink your approach to communicating with strangers?

We encourage you to read the case studies that most interest you, but be sure not to miss the following sections, as they introduce key concepts to the book: (Chapters on eReserve. Contact a librarian for password.)

Introduction
Chapter Four: The Holy Fool
Chapter Six: The Friends Fallacy
Chapter Twelve (Conclusion): Sandra Bland

Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
Call Number: HM1106 .G58 2019
Publication Date: 2019-09-10
Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers--and why they often go wrong. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn't true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland--throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.