Program Description: The Hudson Area Library Non-Fiction Book Group will read Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell, for their September meeting and discussion. All are welcome. The book is available to borrow in print.
Date/Time: Monday, September 27, 6pm
Register: Email Mark Orton, Library Board President and facilitator of the book group, at morton@hudsonarealibrary.org or call 518-828-1792 x101 for Zoom link.
The Non-Fiction Book Group meets each month on Mondays, 6-7:30pm on Zoom. The group is facilitated by library Board President, Mark Orton. For more information on the Non-Fiction Book Group, and to see previous book selections, visit their page.
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 each other that isn’t true?
While tackling these questions, Malcolm Gladwell was not solely writing a book for the page. He was also producing for the ear. In the audiobook version of Talking to Strangers, you’ll hear the voices of people he interviewed–scientists, criminologists, military psychologists. Court transcripts are brought to life with re-enactments. You actually hear the contentious arrest of Sandra Bland by the side of the road in Texas. As Gladwell revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, and the suicide of Sylvia Plath, you hear directly from many of the players in these real-life tragedies. There’s even a theme song – Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talmbout.”
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.