Talking to strangers : what we should know about the people we don't know / Malcolm Gladwell.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 349-379) and index.

Introduction : "Step out of the car!" -- Part I. Spies and diplomats : two puzzles. Fidel Castro's revenge ; Getting to know der F�uhrer -- Part II. Default to truth. The queen of Cuba ; The holy fool ; Case study : The boy in the shower -- Part III. Transparency. The Friends fallacy ; A (short) explanation of the Amanda Knox case ; Case study : The fraternity party -- Part IV. Lessons. KSM : what happens when the stranger is a terrorist? -- Part V. Coupling. Sylvia Plath ; Case study : The Kansas City experiments ; Sandra Bland.

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.