With all the great reading material available for our businesses, let me take this last week of the month to feature a different kind of book. If you have read any of Malcolm Gladwell’s other books, such as Outliers or Revisionist History, you will not be disappointed in his latest.

In Talking to Strangers, Gladwell offers us reasons why we misunderstand each other, and at no other juncture in US history do we find the problem as prevalent as today. Whether you mask or unmask, whether you vote one way or another, whether you stand on one side of a line or the other, lines still seem to define us. So why do we take the stands we take? Why do misunderstandings persist?

It is not my intent to offer you a weak and unpalatable version of Gladwell’s own verbiage, but to encourage you to read it for yourself. Here are the topics he covers in the chapters within the book:

• Diplomats and spies—perspective on Fidel Castro and Adolph Hitler

• Default to truth—how we go about figuring out lies?

• Transparency—can we trust facial expression or intonations in discerning truth versus lie?

• Lessons—what happens when a stranger is a terrorist?

• Coupling—the pairing of significant events with what transpires

It’s a fascinating read, and I came away with mixed emotions. That’s one of the hallmarks of a good book, isn’t it? Getting to the core of truth versus what we want to believe challenges us and causes us to think deeply, to re-evaluate the premises governing our lives.

Are there easy answers? The classic tells outlined by the American Psychological Association may work well over a game of poker, but do they work if you spot a suspicious man setting a briefcase down at a café and walking away forgetting it? What would you do? What might you say? Makes you think, right?

Let’s take a different scenario: Someone wants to benefit your business, but is it a gift you want to accept? Inc. describes ways to take some of the guesswork out of the exchange, realizing that you are not talking to a spy trained in deceit, but to a person who may or may not be on the up and up. My brother-in-law accepted the infusion of cash and partnership of someone in starting a sporting goods store. The person ended up robbing him blind, and it was a legal mess which spanned years, not months. Should he or could he have guessed something like this would happen? Sometimes gifts come like Trojan horses and sometimes we are just too suspicious for our own good. How do we tell the difference?

You may read this book and walk away without an easy answer, but it’s the journey that prepares you for this world, not the pat answer you have squirreled away in your back pocket. When life’s difficult choices are set before you, the idea is to couple all you have read with all you have learned by experience to come up with the best possible decision. Every bad experience begins by first having talked to a stranger who wormed his/her way into your confidence. Learning how to recognize one from the other is invaluable. Truly invaluable.