Melinda Blau

Journalist Melinda Blau, voice of the Consequential Strangers blog, has been researching and reporting about relationships and social trends since the seventies. She has written more than eighty magazine pieces and a dozen other books, including the best-selling Baby Whisperer series. She is a mother, grandmother, and a very good cook (if she says so herself) and has consequential strangers in New York City, Fire Island, Northampton, Massachusetts, and Sunny Isles Beach, Florida.

Books by Melinda Blau

Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don't Seem to Matter. . . But Really Do

by Melinda Blau, Karen L. Fingerman

W. W. Norton & Company

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Contact Melinda Blau

Author of

Consequential Strangers

We tend to take our everyday acqauintances for granted: our coffee person and car mechanic, our coworkers and fellow volunteers, a golf buddy, a teacher, our Facebook “friends.” And yet these consequential strangers provide novelty and information, shape our identity, and open us to new opportunities. They help keep us healthy and are invaluable when we’re sick. They fuel innovation, propel social movements, hasten the flow of new ideas, and are vital in times of uncertainty.