Download or read book The Power of Strangers written by Joe Keohane and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “meticulously researched and buoyantly written” (Esquire) look at what happens when we talk to strangers, and why it affects everything from our own health and well-being to the rise and fall of nations in the tradition of Susan Cain’s Quiet and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens “This lively, searching work makes the case that welcoming ‘others’ isn’t just the bedrock of civilization, it’s the surest path to the best of what life has to offer.”—Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Homeland Elegies In our cities, we stand in silence at the pharmacy and in check-out lines at the grocery store, distracted by our phones, barely acknowledging one another, even as rates of loneliness skyrocket. Online, we retreat into ideological silos reinforced by algorithms designed to serve us only familiar ideas and like-minded users. In our politics, we are increasingly consumed by a fear of people we’ve never met. But what if strangers—so often blamed for our most pressing political, social, and personal problems—are actually the solution? In The Power of Strangers, Joe Keohane sets out on a journey to discover what happens when we bridge the distance between us and people we don’t know. He learns that while we’re wired to sometimes fear, distrust, and even hate strangers, people and societies that have learned to connect with strangers benefit immensely. Digging into a growing body of cutting-edge research on the surprising social and psychological benefits that come from talking to strangers, Keohane finds that even passing interactions can enhance empathy, happiness, and cognitive development, ease loneliness and isolation, and root us in the world, deepening our sense of belonging. And all the while, Keohane gathers practical tips from experts on how to talk to strangers, and tries them out himself in the wild, to awkward, entertaining, and frequently poignant effect. Warm, witty, erudite, and profound, equal parts sweeping history and self-help journey, this deeply researched book will inspire readers to see everything—from major geopolitical shifts to trips to the corner store—in an entirely new light, showing them that talking to strangers isn’t just a way to live; it’s a way to survive.

Download or read book Land of Strangers written by Ash Amin and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-24 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impersonality of social relationships in the society of strangers is making majorities increasingly nostalgic for a time of closer personal ties and strong community moorings. The constitutive pluralism and hybridity of modern living in the West is being rejected in an age of heightened anxiety over the future and drummed up aversion towards the stranger. Minorities, migrants and dissidents are expected to stay away, or to conform and integrate, as they come to be framed in an optic of the social as interpersonal or communitarian. Judging these developments as dangerous, this book offers a counter-argument by looking to relations that are not reducible to local or social ties in order to offer new suggestions for living in diversity and for forging a different politics of the stranger. The book explains the balance between positive and negative public feelings as the synthesis of habits of interaction in varied spaces of collective being, from the workplace and urban space, to intimate publics and tropes of imagined community. The book proposes a series of interventions that make for public being as both unconscious habit and cultivated craft of negotiating difference, radiating civilities of situated attachment and indifference towards the strangeness of others. It is in the labour of cultivating the commons in a variety of ways that Amin finds the elements for a new politics of diversity appropriate for our times, one that takes the stranger as there, unavoidable, an equal claimant on ground that is not pre-allocated.

Download or read book The Necessity of Strangers written by Alan Gregerman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A counterintuitive approach to fostering greater innovation, collaboration, and engagement Most of us assume our success relies on a network of friends and close contacts. But innovative thinking requires a steady stream of fresh ideas and new possibilities, which strangers are more likely to introduce. Our survival instincts naturally cause us to look upon strangers with suspicion and distrust, but in The Necessity of Strangers, Alan Gregerman offers the provocative idea that engaging with strangers is an opportunity, not a threat, and that engaging with the right strangers is essential to unlocking our real potential. The Necessity of Strangers reveals how strangers challenge us to think differently about ourselves and the problems we face. Shows how strangers can help us innovate better, get the most out of each other, and achieve genuine collaboration Presents principles for developing a "stranger-centric" mindset to develop new markets and stronger customer relationships, leverage the full potential of partnerships, and become more effective leaders Includes practical guidance and a toolkit for being more open, creating new ideas that matter, finding the right strangers in all walks of life, and tapping the real brilliance in yourself To stay competitive, you and your business need access to more new ideas, insights, and perspectives than ever before. The Necessity of Strangers offers an essential guide to discovering the most exciting opportunities you haven't met yet.

Download or read book The Kindness of Strangers written by Salka Viertel and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir about showbiz in the early 20th century that travels from the theaters of Vienna, Prague, and Berlin, to Hollywood during the golden age, complete with encounters with Franz Kafka, Albert Einstein, and Greta Garbo along the way. Salka Viertel’s autobiography tells of a brilliant, creative, and well-connected woman’s pilgrimage through the darkest years of the twentieth century, a journey that would take her from a remote province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Hollywood. The Kindness of Strangers is, to quote the New Yorker writer S. N. Behrman, “a very rich book. It provides a panorama of the dissolving civilizations of the twentieth century. In all of them the author lived at the apex of their culture and artistic aristocracies. Her childhood . . . is an entrancing idyll. In Berlin, in Prague, in Vienna, there appears Karl Kraus, Kafka, Rilke, Robert Musil, Schoenberg, Einstein, Alban Berg. There is the suffering and disruption of the First World War and the suffering and agony after it, which is described with such intimacy and vividness that you endure these terrible years with the author. Then comes the migration to Hollywood, where Salka’s house on Maybery Road becomes a kind of Pantheon for the gathered artists, musicians, and writers. It seems to me that no one has ever described Hollywood and the life of writers there with such verve.”

Download or read book Wayfaring Strangers written by Fiona Ritchie and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-08-01 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, a steady stream of Scots migrated to Ulster and eventually onward across the Atlantic to resettle in the United States. Many of these Scots-Irish immigrants made their way into the mountains of the southern Appalachian region. They brought with them a wealth of traditional ballads and tunes from the British Isles and Ireland, a carrying stream that merged with sounds and songs of English, German, Welsh, African American, French, and Cherokee origin. Their enduring legacy of music flows today from Appalachia back to Ireland and Scotland and around the globe. Ritchie and Orr guide readers on a musical voyage across oceans, linking people and songs through centuries of adaptation and change.

Download or read book Talking to Strangers written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press 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 one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. 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. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

Download or read book The Art of Gathering written by Priya Parker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read!" --Chris Anderson, owner and curator of TED From the host of the New York Times podcast Together Apart, an exciting new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together—at home, at work, in our communities, and beyond. In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive--which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play. Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings--conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp--and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience. The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue--and how you host and attend them.

Download or read book Strangers and Cousins written by Leah Hager Cohen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR One of Christian Science Monitor's BEST FICTION OF 2019 "Funny and tender but also provocative and wise. . . One of the most hopeful and insightful novels I've read in years." - Ron Charles, The Washington Post "Serious yet joyous comedy, reminiscent of the Pultizer-winning Less" - Out Magazine A novel about what happens when an already sprawling family hosts an even larger and more chaotic wedding: an entertaining story about family, culture, memory, and community. In the seemingly idyllic town of Rundle Junction, Bennie and Walter are preparing to host the wedding of their eldest daughter Clem. A marriage ceremony at their beloved, rambling home should be the happiest of occasions, but Walter and Bennie have a secret. A new community has moved to Rundle Junction, threatening the social order and forcing Bennie and Walter to confront uncomfortable truths about the lengths they would go to to maintain harmony. Meanwhile, Aunt Glad, the oldest member of the family, arrives for the wedding plagued by long-buried memories of a scarring event that occurred when she was a girl in Rundle Junction. As she uncovers details about her role in this event, the family begins to realize that Clem's wedding may not be exactly what it seemed. Clever, passionate, artistic Clem has her own agenda. What she doesn't know is that by the end, everyone will have roles to play in this richly imagined ceremony of familial connection-a brood of quirky relatives, effervescent college friends, ghosts emerging from the past, a determined little mouse, and even the very group of new neighbors whose presence has shaken Rundle Junction to its core. With Strangers and Cousins, Leah Hager Cohen delivers a story of pageantry and performance, hopefulness and growth, and introduces a winsome, unforgettable cast of characters whose lives are forever changed by events that unfold and reverberate across generations.

Download or read book Strangers at the Feast written by Jennifer Vanderbes and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting second novel that unfolds over the course of Thanksgiving Day as two families are connected by a horrific crime.

Download or read book A Gathering of Fugitives written by Diana Anhalt and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural Writing. "A fascinating exhumation of a little-known group of American communists-idealists, artists, spies and Hollywood types-who migrated to Mexican exile in the late 1940s and 1950s. Diana Anhalt tells their story-and her own-sympathetically but not uncritically"-Dr. Harvey Klehr. "Diane Anhalt's lively personal account introduces us to the heretofore unknown story of this struggling community.It's an important story-and Anhalt tells it well-reminding us of the personal costs that political repression can inflict upon its victims and their families"-Dr. Ellen W. Schrecker.

Download or read book This Brilliant Darkness A Book of Strangers written by Jeff Sharlet and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A luminous, moving and visual record of fleeting moments of connection.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice A visionary work of radical empathy. Known for immersion journalism that is more immersed than most people are willing to go, and for a prose style that is somehow both fierce and soulful, Jeff Sharlet dives deep into the darkness around us and awaiting us. This work began when his father had a heart attack; two years later, Jeff, still in his forties, had a heart attack of his own. In the grip of writerly self-doubt, Jeff turned to images, taking snapshots and posting them on Instagram, writing short, true stories that bloomed into documentary. During those two years, he spent a lot of time on the road: meeting strangers working night shifts as he drove through the mountains to see his father; exploring the life and death of Charley Keunang, a once-aspiring actor shot by the police on LA’s Skid Row; documenting gay pride amidst the violent homophobia of Putin’s Russia; passing time with homeless teen addicts in Dublin; and accompanying a lonely woman, whose only friend was a houseplant, on shopping trips. Early readers have called this book “incantatory,” the voice “prophetic,” in “James Agee’s tradition of looking at the reality of American lives.” Defined by insomnia and late-night driving and the companionship of other darkness-dwellers—night bakers and last-call drinkers, frightened people and frightening people, the homeless, the lost (or merely disoriented), and other people on the margins—This Brilliant Darkness erases the boundaries between author, subject, and reader to ask: how do people live with suffering?

Download or read book Season of Strangers written by Kat Martin and published by MIRA. This book was released on 2015-01-27 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After experiencing a bizarre episode of lost time, Julie Ferris becomes worried about what is going on around her, including the miraculous recovery of her boss, playboy Patrick Donovan, from a cocaine-fueled heart attack.

Download or read book The Company of Strangers written by Paul Seabright and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a wonderful book, very well written and accessible to a wide audience.

Download or read book Strangers in High Places written by Michael Frome and published by Univ Tennessee Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this expanded edition of his classic Strangers in High Places, Michael Frome continues to capture the attention and admiration of nature lovers, environmentalists, and professionals as he reviews the last quarter-century in and around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Frome's superbly written account tells the story of the Great Smoky Mountains and their inhabitants--Eastern Cherokee, back-country settlers, lumbermen, moonshiners, bears and boars. Frome chronicles the power struggles, legislation, and land transactions surrounding the creation of the national park and discusses the continuing threats to the park's natural beauty. Frome's recent conversations with residents, new and old, along with a complement of historic and contemporary photographs, confirm the views stated in the book's original 1966 edition. The author brings his knowledge, experience, and insights to bear on "one of God's special places." He suggests alternatives to commercial overdevelopment and the destruction of the Great Smokies' flora and fauna, citing recent cases such as the Tellico Dam project and the continuing pollution of the Pigeon River. Always emphasizing our inevitable relationship with our surroundings, Frome relates the story of the Great Smoky Mountains with respect and affection for the region, its people, and their history. Michael Frome ranks among the foremost American authors on travel and conservation. His interests are closely associated with national parks, national forests, and natural beauty in the United States and other countries. He has been a columnist and correspondent for major newspapers and magazines and a university lecturer. He is author of Conscience of a Conservationist: Selected Essays.

Download or read book Duped written by Timothy R. Levine and published by University Alabama Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scrupulous account that overturns many commonplace notions about how we can best detect lies and falsehoods From the advent of fake news to climate-science denial and Bernie Madoff’s appeal to investors, people can be astonishingly gullible. Some people appear authentic and sincere even when the facts discredit them, and many people fall victim to conspiracy theories and economic scams that should be dismissed as obviously ludicrous. This happens because of a near-universal human tendency to operate within a mindset that can be characterized as a “truth-default.” We uncritically accept most of the messages we receive as “honest.” We all are perceptually blind to deception. We are hardwired to be duped. The question is, can anything be done to militate against our vulnerability to deception without further eroding the trust in people and social institutions that we so desperately need in civil society? Timothy R. Levine’s Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception recounts a decades-long program of empirical research that culminates in a new theory of deception—truth-default theory. This theory holds that the content of incoming communication is typically and uncritically accepted as true, and most of the time, this is good. Truth-default allows humans to function socially. Further, because most deception is enacted by a few prolific liars, the so called “truth-bias” is not really a bias after all. Passive belief makes us right most of the time, but the catch is that it also makes us vulnerable to occasional deceit. Levine’s research on lie detection and truth-bias has produced many provocative new findings over the years. He has uncovered what makes some people more believable than others and has discovered several ways to improve lie-detection accuracy. In Duped, Levine details where these ideas came from, how they were tested, and how the findings combine to produce a coherent new understanding of human deception and deception detection.

Download or read book At the Strangers Gate written by Adam Gopnik and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid memoir that captures the energy, ambition and romance of New York in the 1980s from the beloved New Yorker Canadian writer, to stand alongside his bestselling Paris to the Moon and Through the Children's Gate. When Adam Gopnik and his soon-to-be-wife, Martha Parker, left the comforts of home in Montreal for New York, the city then, much like today, was a pilgrimage site for the young and the arty and ambitious. But it was also becoming a city of greed, where both life's consolations and its necessities were increasingly going to the highest bidder. At the Stranger's Gate builds a portrait of this moment in New York through the story of their journey--from their excited arrival as aspiring artists to their eventual growth into a New York family. Gopnik transports us to their tiny basement room on the Upper East Side--the smallest apartment in Manhattan--and later to SoHo, where he captures a unicorn: an affordable New York loft. Between tender, laugh-out-loud reminiscences, including affectionate portraits of New York luminaries from Richard Avedon to Robert Hughes and Jeff Koons, Gopnik takes us into the corridors of Condé Nast, the galleries of MoMA and many places between to illuminate the fascinating world capital of creativity and aspiration that is New York, then and now.

Download or read book The University of Strangers written by Bob Pfeifer and published by . This book was released on 2011-02-02 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fictionalized account of the Amanda Knox murder case in Perugia, Italy.