Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell

86 reviews

montyalmoro's review against another edition

informative medium-paced

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Police brutality, Suicide attempt, Alcohol, and Sexual harassment

carolinethilde's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective tense slow-paced

4.0

This book made me remember that I don’t actually know anything at all. Malcolm Gladwell’s ability to dissect cultural phenomena and show us the guts is successful once again, in Talking to Strangers. 
I never realized how many small assessments we make of people we’ve only just met! Gladwell proves that humans are judgmental by nature. Most of what we assume is incorrect. He examines what went wrong in that traffic stop that was an innocent Sandra Bland’s untimely end and how it speaks to a broader social context. How do we make snap judgments about the people we’ve met and why? Are we too trusting? Too wary? Gladwell covers it all and reveals some hard truths about how we should be treating the people around us. 

Pro tip: don’t read this book in the park if you don’t want random strangers to come up to you and strike up weird conversations!! I learned that the hard way. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Racism, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Police brutality, Suicide attempt, and Gaslighting

There is analytical discussion on attempts at suicide, racial profiling, and pedophilic behavior.

aquariusvintage's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Police brutality, and Suicide attempt

julia_joy's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Mental illness, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicide, and Alcohol

captainwinter's review against another edition

informative slow-paced

2.5

The book made some interesting points and had some good examples, but I don’t think I learned anything new. It’s a lot of “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” and Default-to Truth, and I’m not sure what I just read exactly? Also his generalisations bugged me a bit. It felt a bit ‘well, he couldn’t help raping her, he was drunk’ and ‘he was just doing what he was told, but nah, it wasn’t racism’. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape and Suicide

Moderate: Pedophilia

binnearl's review against another edition

1.0

I was looking forward to this book because Malcolm Gladwell has a reputation for writing informative analyses on a variety of subjects. However, I feel like this title and his main thesis is very misleading. Many of the scenarios that Gladwell uses can't be simply described as "stranger" situations. He doesn't take into account the pre-existing power dynamics that make this not a simple case of "stranger meeting stranger and the interaction goes wrong". 

There are several cases that Gladwell should have not used because they didn't prove his point or he greatly misrepresented the case. For example, the Brock Turner case was not a simple situation of "Turner tried to figure out whether Chanel Miller was consenting and he made a mistake". If you read the actual case, you would know Turner didn't just "make a mistake".  Two male students had to tackle Turner when he ran away when they saw him sexually assaulting a visibly unconscious Miller.  Gladwell paints Brock Turner as a case of a "mistaken judgment call" mixing with "alcohol". 

The Sandra Bland case is another notable analysis that Gladwell severely fails to represent. The lack of discussion of race and the inherent power dynamic that a police officer has in this scenario is not discussed in this chapter. He briefly mentions how black people are stopped more often by the police. But he doesn't look at the systematic issue of policing nor the individual responsibility of the officer.

There are other topics that Gladwell makes puzzling conclusions and a lot of "correlation is causation" conclusions, especially with his example of suicide and home ovens. It's a lot of sweeping generalization and usage of anecdotes (that don't even support his main thesis of the book which is even more confusing.)

Overall, one should read this book with a high degree of skepticism because this is more of a shallow coffee table book that takes extra steps to humanize abusers rather than the victims.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Suicide, and Police brutality

beanslinger_librarian's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Racism, and Suicide

Gladwell discusses these topics from a critical or analytical perspective.

didireadthat's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

I really liked listening to the author narrate his own book. I think adding the theme song and actors or real transcripts really added to the story telling. I didn’t read too much about the content of the book before I started listening and sometimes didn’t feel emotionally prepared for the topics but I also think that made them even more impactful.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pedophilia, Rape, Suicide, Torture, Violence, and Police brutality

Moderate: Gun violence, Murder, and Alcohol

rhosynmd's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

This is one of those books I know I’m going to be thinking about for a long time afterwards. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Police brutality, and Suicide attempt

stories's review against another edition

slow-paced

2.0

Clear contention which was well signposted and scaffolded. Unfortunately said contention was also distasteful and built on astounding levels of rape apologist, ableism and an enduring belief that we should simply carry on stereotyping, just generously, as if the possibility of accounting for diversity were unfathomable. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship and Rape

Moderate: Ableism, Gun violence, Hate crime, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide, and Alcohol

Minor: Death, Racism, Police brutality, Mass/school shootings, and Car accident