Deep into Malcolm Gladwell’s “Talking to Strangers,” his first book in six years, lies a precise arrangement of words that could function as a Rorschach test — a sentence that will strike you as reassuring if you love his best-selling books or exasperating if you don’t.
Writing about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, or K.S.M., the senior Al Qaeda official and alleged mastermind of 9/11 who was taken to C.I.A. black sites and subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Gladwell is careful to keep the reader on track: “But let us leave aside those broader ethical questions for a moment, and focus on what the interrogation of K.S.M. can tell us about the two puzzles.”
There it is: The ultimate Gladwellian sentence. It’s a gentle directive for those of “us” making our way through the quagmire with Gladwell as our friendly guide. In a chapter called “K.S.M.: What Happens When the Stranger Is a Terrorist?,” he knows that his descriptions of waterboarding might be distracting. But instead of getting bogged down in “broader ethical questions,” we need to keep our focus trained on the “two puzzles” (more on those in a bit).
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