I have enjoyed Gladwell's previous books, although with a few reservations such as his lack of female examples and comprehension of the female position. But, taking everything he says as just applicable (or at least studied) for men, they're an interesting read.

This one is a look at how communications break down - how human beings "default to truth" and require extraordinary evidence to be convinced that someone is lying, and why most of the time this behaviour keeps our society moving smoothly. He also looks at how people's actions and behaviour can conflict, sending mixed messages, and causing misunderstandings and tragedies. So far mostly so good, it's a bit superficial but interesting summary of some of the research out there.

HOWEVER, he completely lost me in his final conclusions. At the end of the book, Gladwell concludes it's for the best that most people "default to truth" when interacting with strangers and that this approach is vital to our social compact. And the specific examples he uses to illustrate this? Pedophiles and rapists who go unconfronted and unconvicted for years. We should, he argues, be more forgiving of the people who were told about their behaviour but chose to ignore it and thus allowed it to continue, because they were just upholding the social contract by "defaulting to truth". WTF?

Our current society isn't some perfect system that needs protecting and maintaining with no changes for any price. Who benefits from the status quo continuing? We live with a status quo where children, women, and minorities are not believed when they report abuse. Society as it "defaults to truth" (especially when truth is spoken by prosperous white men) is working fine for men, a group of which Gladwell is a part, but there is definitely room for improvement on behalf of everyone else. Gladwell could have used this book to identify ways that we can work to improve our innate biases, now we know about them. Ways the justice system and other areas of authority could implement checks and balances to ensure that our human bias towards truth is not resulting in the abuse of children and the rape of girls and women. But no ... not a word of that. Just a conclusion that Oh well, overall it's mostly okay so those people suffering should just accept it's for the good of society.

Once again, W T F.

I can't believe editors actually published this book as is.