Communicating with Strangers

At the start of Talking to Strangers, Gladwell establishes his overarching interesting in dissecting the ways in which humans have learned to communicate with strangers. Through his examinations of a series of legal cases and psychological studies, Gladwell argues that people use a flawed mode of interacting with others they do not know. In the text's introduction, "Step out of the car!" Gladwell briefly presents Sandra Bland's controversial case through the lens of this aforementioned thesis. Bland and the arresting Texas State Trooper, Brian Encinia, he says, were merely strangers, encountering one other under particular circumstances. He describes Bland's life preceding her move to Texas for work, offering the reader a side of her story she may not have experienced before, compelling she see Bland the way Encinia could not.

By the final chapter of Talking to Strangers, "Sandra Bland," Gladwell returns to the case, presenting...