Talking to Strangers - Malcolm Gladwell Page 0,107

Bland case was the subject of a 2018 HBO documentary, Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra Bland, directed and produced by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner. Say Her Name was created with the full cooperation of Bland’s family, and it does a very good job of describing her life and capturing her spirit. However, it feeds into the speculation—common in various corners of the internet—that there was something suspicious about Bland’s death. I do not find those suspicions persuasive, and Say Her Name presents no real evidence to support them. The heartbreak of Sandra Bland is, as you have just read, more complicated—and, tragically, more systemic—than that.

“I am up today just praising God…”: “Sandy Speaks on her birthday! February 7th, 2015,” YouTube, February 7, 2015, accessed January 10, 2019, youtube/watch?v=KfrZM2Qjvtc.

has been viewed in one form or another several million times: See Texas Department of Public Safety video (963K views), WSJ video (42K views), second WSJ video (37k views), plus sites without video-view counts such as nytimes and nbc.

Transcript up to “for a failure to signal?”: “Sandra Bland Traffic Stop,” Texas Department of Public Safety, YouTube, 2015, youtube/watch?v=CaW09Ymr2BA.

Michael Brown was shot to death: Rachel Clarke and Christopher Lett, “What happened when Michael Brown met Officer Darren Wilson,” CNN, November 11, 2014, cnn/interactive/2014/08/us/ferguson-brown-timeline/.

In Baltimore, a young black man named Freddie Gray…Scott was killed on April 4, 2015: Peter Herman and John Woodrow Cox, “A Freddie Gray primer: Who was he, how did he die, why is there so much anger?” Washington Post, April 28, 2015,washingtonpost/news/local/wp/2015/04/28/a-freddie-gray-primer-who-was-he-how-did-he-why-is-there-so-much-anger. For Philando Castile, see Mark Berman, “Minnesota officer charged with manslaughter for shooting Philando Castile during incident on Facebook,” Washington Post, November 16, 2016, washingtonpost/news/post-nation/wp/2016/11/16/prosecutors-to-announce-update-on-investigation-into-shooting-of-philando-castile/?utm_term=.1e7914da2c3b. For Eric Garner, see Deborah Bloom and Jareen Imam, “New York man dies after chokehold by police,” CNN, December 8, 2014, cnn/2014/07/20/justice/ny-chokehold-death/index.html. For Walter Scott, see Michael Miller, Lindsey Bever, and Sarah Kaplan, “How a cellphone video led to murder charges against a cop in North Charleston, S.C.,” Washington Post, April 8, 2015, washingtonpost/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/08/how-a-cell-phone-video-led-to-murder-charges-against-a-cop-in-north-charleston-s-c/?utm_term=.476f73934c34.

“Good morning…and still be killed”: “Sandy Speaks—April 8th 2015 (Black Lives Matter),” YouTube, April 8, 2015, youtube/watch?v=CIKeZgC8lQ4.

Confrontation between Cortés and Montezuma: William Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico (New York: Modern Library, 1980).

“When we saw so many cities”: Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1928), p. 270, archive/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.152204/page/n295.

Description of first meeting up to “Yes, I am he”: Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Cortés, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 279.

“innumerable rooms inside…and admirable white fur robes”: Thomas, Conquest, p. 280.

The idea that Montezuma considered Cortés a god (in footnote): Camilla Townsend, “Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico,” American Historical Review 108, no. 3 (2003): 659–87.

“The impossibility of adequately translating…Spanish surrender”: Matthew Restall, When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting That Changed History (New York: Harper Collins, 2018), p. 345.

If you are interested in the Cortés-Montezuma story, I strongly recommend the last two of these sources. Restall’s book is marvelous. And Townsend is that rarest of historians, able to write scholarly history in academic journals that reads like it was written for all of us.

Chapter One: Fidel Castro’s Revenge

“I am a case officer from Cuban Intelligence. I am an intelligence comandante”: This account is taken from Brian Latell, Castro’s Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, the CIA, and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 26.

one of the former Havana station chiefs: Herald Staff, “Spy work celebrated at museum in Havana,” Miami Herald, July 16, 2001, latinamericanstudies/espionage/spy-museum.htm.

until he had listed dozens of names: Benjamin B. Fischer, “Doubles Troubles: The CIA and Double Agents during the Cold War,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 21, no. 1 (2016): 48–74.

There were detailed explanations of which park bench: I. C. Smith, Inside: A Top G-Man Exposes Spies, Lies, and Bureaucratic Bungling Inside the FBI (Nashville: Nelson Current, 2004), pp. 95–96.

CIA officer stuffing cash: Herald Staff, “Spy work celebrated at museum in Miami,” Miami Herald, July 16, 2001.

“we were in the enviable position…to the Americans.”: Here Fischer quotes from Markus Wolf, with Anne McElvoy, Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism’s Greatest Spymaster (New York: Times Books/Random House, 1997), p. 285.

Chapter Two: Getting to Know der Führer

The account of Chamberlain and Hitler is taken from a number of sources, but chiefly David Faber’s excellent Munich, 1938: Appeasement and World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), pp. 272–96; “so unconventional…breath away,” p. 229;