Journalist Melinda Blau is the co-author of Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don't Seem to Matter. . . But Really Do
. She has been researching and reporting about relationships and social trends since the seventies, and 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. She also blogs on MotherU, an intergenerational website where she hopes to encourage a dialogue among contemporary mothers and grandmothers.