This timely exploration of our history of welcoming strangers offers a powerful, uplifting antidote to our increasingly atomised world.

We navigate our interactions with strangers according to a host of unwritten rules, rituals and (sometimes awkward) attempts at politeness. But what if the people we meet were not a problem, but a gift? When philosopher and traveller Will Buckingham's partner died, he sought solace in throwing open the door to new people. Now, as we reflect on our experiences of the pandemic and its enforced separations, and as global migration figures ever more prominently in our collective future, Buckingham brings together insights from philosophy, anthropology, history and literature to explore how our traditions of meeting the other can mitigate the issues of our time. Taking in stories of loneliness, exile and friendship from classical times to the modern day, and alighting in adapting communities from Birmingham to Myanmar, Hello, Stranger asks: how do we set aside our instinctive xenophobia - fear of outsiders - and embrace our equally natural philoxenia - love of strangers and newness?

A powerful antidote to our atomised lives, Hello, Stranger delves into humanity's rich history of welcoming (and worrying about) strangers, to show us how being more open might end the loneliness epidemic, solve the migrant crisis and change the world. When Will Buckingham's partner of many years passed away, he opened up his house to strangers and found a path through his grief. By welcoming the unfamiliar, and caring for the needs of those he did not know, Will found himself immersed in a long and rich tradition of hosting and helping strangers. As the loneliness epidemic spirals out of control, and as the migration crisis continues, might we be able to draw on this tradition of welcoming strangers to solve the problems of our time? Charting the history of the stranger from ancient societies to modern borders, anthropologist and philosopher Will Buckingham considers the value that strangers might bring to our lives. Journeying from gifts to feasts, guests to hostages, departures, ghosts, animals and the complications of money, Hello, Stranger, invites us to open up the door, and let the world in.

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.

The uplifting and big-hearted new love story from the author of Until Next Weekend and Saturdays at Noon 'TOTALLY UNPUTDOWNABLE' 5* Reader review 'HAVE YOUR TISSUES READY' 5* Reader review 'THE ENDING WAS PERFECT' 5* Reader review 'Clever, poignant, and satisfying' Sunday Times bestseller Katie Fforde 'An eminently real and relatable love story . . . Lucy and Jamie had me at Hello' Julietta Henderson, author of The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman 'Heartbreakingly tender & poignant. It kept me guessing & hoping until the last page' Sophie Claire, author of A Winter's Dream _______ From their very first date, Jamie and Lucy know they've met THE ONE. They're as different as night and day. Jamie's a home bird, while Lucy's happiest on holiday. He has a place for everything - she can never find her keys. Yet, somehow, they make each other happier than they ever thought possible. So why does their story start with them saying 'goodbye'? And does this really have to be the end . . . ? _______ Relatable, romantic and heartbreakingly real, HELLO, STRANGER proves that the best love stories often have the most unexpected endings. Praise for Rachel Marks: 'A total delight. Beautifully observed, painfully funny and profoundly moving, it's a wise and wonderful story of hope and love. I adored it!' Miranda Dickinson, Sunday Times bestselling author 'A delightful, heart-warming read. The characters feel so real... I'm sure I must know them somehow!' Sophie Cousens, author of the New York Times bestseller This Time Next Year 'Rachel Marks packs a novel with all the emotions - hope, fear, love, despair and - ultimately - joy' Clare Pooley, bestselling author of The Authenticity Project 'Unpredictable and satisfying' Heidi Swain, Sunday Times bestselling author 'As tender and emotional as it is funny, it made me laugh out loud A LOT, and it made me sob' Cressida McLaughlin 'Heartbreaking, heartwarming, perfect!' Rosie Goodwin, Sunday Times bestselling author

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

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.