Conversation: Thinking About Talking (Paperback)

"What is the use of a book, without pictures or conversations?" wondered young Alice at the start of her "Adventures in Wonderland". These two authors have taken her question a step further - they ask what is the value of a life without conversations. "Conversation: Thinking About Talking" takes us on a journey through the times and places of two friends who, a generation apart and from different worlds, should have little to say to each other. They've been saying plenty in decades of debates, loud enough on occasions to get them chucked out of respectable restaurants. Now, they contend, communication isn't what it used to be. Digital and social media threaten to dump old-fashioned conversation by the wayside of electronic babble as political and cultural divisions multiply. This book has a simple message for you. Conversation with those who don't share your views should be not only life-enhancing but world-changing - and fun. Thomas O'Dwyer and Bill Hutman traveled the world as journalists and business investigators, always talking to people - among them prime ministers, terrorists, spies, CEOs, oligarchs, money vultures and philosopher taxi drivers. They show that there is genuine power in open, honest, critical discourse. There has even been some real danger in conversations they could laugh at only after they reached safety. The writers weave in vignettes from their personal and professional lives alongside philosophical musings on the impact of conversation on history and society. This book deconstructs the authors' thirty years of working and talking together. It covers clashing backgrounds in which conversations have developed, among Americans and Iraqis, Russians and Ukrainians, Greeks, Turks and Cypriots - "warming ourselves by eclectic fires." The authors remind us how just one conversation can change lives and tell how some conversations changed theirs. Hateful shouts and threats hurled across political barricades and social-media accounts sound like the death knell of civilized conversation. An epidemic of loneliness and depression is thriving in our super-connected world, yet the art of conversation begins and matures in moments of solitude and self-reflection. In politics, conversations should be the Lego blocks of democracy; in the workplace they oil the wheels of productivity. These authors show that lively debate builds empathy, friendship, love, learning - and a tidy mound of empty wine bottles. They don't have an answer for everything - they're still arguing over what the questions are. But for at least some global ills, "Conversation" may be a good prescription.