Ekta | wisdomekta

  Being an otrovert , there are times when my observations while talking to a person and the words spoken by them seem like contrasts; those talks are the hardest ones. I feel like completing the formality and running away.  And probably, that's the reason, that the title of this recent read attracted me. “Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know” by Malcolm Gladwell – this isn’t the first book I have read by the author. Having already read “The Tipping Point” and “Outliers” by Gladwell, I was more than ready for his signature, journalism-style writing once again. Gladwell certainly attempts to cover a difficult and far-reaching topic – just why and how do conversations with strangers go so wrong? He gives examples reaching back into history – the 16th century first meeting of Cortés and Montezuma – through to the ill-fated meeting of Chamberlain and Hitler, with other famous incidents and accidents. He threw with two puzzles through his writing...

, “Naam Bade aur darshan chote” (Review in one line!!) Well, I chose this book purely because it is an international bestseller and because I had a fair experience reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outlier. However, this time it was a little disappointing to read from him. Throughout the book, I found baseless arguments and irrelevant examples trying to prove some or other points. “The tipping point” with a glowing matchstick ‘i’ in “po i nt” (book cover) poofed my interest with the 1st chapter titled Three Rules of Epidemics wherein the point was made that just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. The book is generally written from a socio-economic perspective and discusses how information spreads among people, why some ideas/products spread quickly and effectively, and whether there are kinds of people who are better at transm...