A Sound Of Strangers

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.

A low-budget breakout film that wowed critics and audiences on its initial release, Stranger Than Paradise would prove to be a seminal film in the new American independent cinema movement and establish its director, Jim Jarmusch, as a hip, cult auteur. Taking inspiration from 1960s underground filmmaking, international art cinema, genre cinema, and punk culture, Jarmusch’s film provides a bridge between midnight movie features and a new mode of quirky, offbeat independent filmmaking. This book probes the film's production history, initial reception, aesthetics, and legacy in order to understand its place within the cult film canon. In examining the film's cult pedigree, it explores a number of threads that fed into the film—including New York downtown culture of the early 1980s and Jarmusch’s involvement in music—as well as reflecting on how the film's status has developed alongside Jarmusch’s subsequent output and reputation.

This Element documents the evolution of a research program that began in the early 1960s with the author's first investigation of language change on Martha's Vineyard. It traces the development of what has become the basic framework for studying language variation and change. Interviews with strangers are the backbone of this research: the ten American English speakers appearing here were all strangers to the interviewer at the time. They were selected as among the most memorable, from thousands of interviews across six decades. The speakers express their ideas and concerns in the language of everyday life, dealing with their way of earning a living, getting along with neighbors, raising a family – all matters in which their language serves them well. These people speak for themselves. And you will hear their voices. What they have to say is a monument to the richness and variety of the American vernacular, offering a tour of the studies that have built the field of sociolinguistics.

Tawa examines the musical traditions brought to America by the peasants and urban workers of southern Italy, the Middle East , and eastern Europe, and by the Chinese, Japanese, and East European Jews, and describes their survival within the American context, in often hostile surroundings.

Were you among the estimated 15 million worldwide viewers that immersed themselves in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana during the first month of Stranger Things being released on Netflix? Or even a subsequent, self-confessed, super-fan? Yes? Well, good news! In anticipation of the second season of Stranger Things, premiering on Halloween 2017, Daniel Bettridge provides us with an ultimate fan guide on an A to Z journey from Atari to the Upside Down. So you can brush up on your knowledge and get ready for what's yet to come! Providing an all new insight into one of the world's most popular television programmes, Bettridge explores the show, its many themes and influences and so much more; giving you the inside information from an outsider's perspective. Pop-culture writer, (and Stranger Things super-fan) Daniel Bettridge, is the author of Travel Guide to Westeros and has written for publications including The Times, the Guardian, the Independent and Vulture.

Lu won’t go with just anyone! Lu is waiting to be picked up after school. She stands on the sidewalk, all alone, and it starts to rain. Ms. Smith walks by, and offers to take her home. Ms. Smith lives in Lu’s neighborhood—but does Lu really know her? Lu asks herself, what’s her first name? Does she dye her hair red? What’s her dog’s name? And she says, “I don’t know you, so I won’t go with you! And besides, Mama said I should wait.” As other adults—all of whom Lu has met in some capacity before—offer to take her home, Lu continues to consider if she really knows them. One by one, she refuses to go with them. Until, finally, the person Mama said she should go home with shows up—though his appearance is a surprise to the reader! This sensitively narrated story illustrates how clear rules and arrangements can help protect and empower children during an especially vulnerable time of day. The ending includes a prompt for readers to create their own similar “safe” list, and a list of resources for parents.

Even the staunchest of landlubbers knows what rockets at sea mean... or do they? A short space of time after the fatal collision with an iceberg, the Titanic's crew sent rockets aloft to attract the attention of a ship seen just a few miles. But that ship never responded ... and 1500 people died in the frigid waters. This book details the scandal of the Californian, blamed by many for being that very unresponsive stranger. Rockets were seen and ignored...but was the Captain guilty of mass murder? Did more than 1000 people needlessly die? Why was the wireless operator not awakened? Could the Californian have saved anyone? And why is this story, neglecting the ethical controversy surrounding salvage, the single most divisive issue in the Titanic research community?

The Duffer Brothers' award-winning Stranger Things exploded onto the pop culture scene in 2016. The Netflix original series revels in a nostalgic view of 1980s America while darkly portraying the cynical aspects of the period. This collection of 23 new essays explores how the show reduces, reuses and recycles '80s pop culture--from the films of Spielberg, Carpenter and Hughes to punk and synthwave music to Dungeons & Dragons--and how it shapes our understanding of the decade through distorted memory. Contributors discuss gender and sexual orientation; the politics, psychology and educational policies of the day; and how the ultimate upper-class teen idol of the Reagan era became Stranger Things' middle-aged blue-collar heroine.