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Summary
Summary
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Experience the book that started the Quiet Movement and revolutionized how the world sees introverts--and how introverts see themselves--by offering validation, inclusion, and inspiration
"Superbly researched, deeply insightful, and a fascinating read, Quiet is an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to understand the gifts of the introverted half of the population."--Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY People * O: The Oprah Magazine * Christian Science Monitor * Inc. * Library Journal * Kirkus Reviews
What are the advantages of being an introvert? They make up at least one-third of the people we know. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts--Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak--that we owe many of the great contributions to society.
In Quiet , Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts--from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, impeccably researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how you see yourself.
Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader's guide and bonus content
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
While American culture and business tend to be dominated by extroverts, business consultant Cain explores and champions the one-third to one-half of the population who are introverts. She defines the term broadly, including "solitude-seeking" and "contemplative," but also "sensitive," "humble," and "risk-averse." Such individuals, she claims (though with insufficient evidence), are "disproportionately represented among the ranks of the spectacularly creative." Yet the American school and workplace make it difficult for those who draw strength from solitary musing by over-emphasizing teamwork and what she calls "the new Groupthink." Cain gives excellent portraits of a number of introverts and shatters misconceptions. For example, she notes, introverts can negotiate as well as, or better than, alpha males and females because they can take a firm stand "without inflaming [their] counterpart's ego." Cain provides tips to parents and teachers of children who are introverted or seem socially awkward and isolated. She suggests, for instance, exposing them gradually to new experiences that are otherwise overstimulating. Cain consistently holds the reader's interest by presenting individual profiles, looking at places dominated by extroverts (Harvard Business School) and introverts (a West Coast retreat center), and reporting on the latest studies. Her diligence, research, and passion for this important topic has richly paid off. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
It's hard to believe, in this world of social media and reality TV, that one-third to one-half of Americans are introverts. Yet being an introvert has become a social stigma. The rise of what the author dubs the Extrovert Ideal (in which the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight) began with Dale Carnegie and his wildly popular self-help books. Simultaneously, we saw the rise of the movie star and of personality-driven ads and the appearance of the inferiority complex, developed by psychologist Alfred Adler. Today, pitchmen like Tony Robbins sell the idea of extroversion as the key to greatness. But and this is key to the author's thesis personal space and privacy are absolutely vital to creativity and invention, as is freedom from peer pressure. Cain also explores the fundamental differences in psychology and physiology between extroverts and introverts, showing how being an introvert or an extrovert is really a biological imperative. No slick self-help book, this is an intelligent and often surprising look at what makes us who we are.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
MY neighbor, a leadership development consultant who regularly helps people improve themselves through personality tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, once told me I was the most introverted person he'd ever met. I took this as a compliment. Who wouldn't? The introverts who are the subject of Susan Cain's new book, "Quiet," don't experience their inwardness in quite so self-congratulatory a way. They and others view their tendency toward solitary activity, quiet reflection and reserve as "a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology," Cain writes. Too often denigrated and frequently overlooked in a society that's held in thrall to an "Extrovert Ideal - the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha and comfortable in the spotlight," Cain's introverts are overwhelmed by the social demands thrust upon them. They're also underwhelmed by the example set by the voluble, socially successful go-getters in their midst who "speak without thinking," in the words of a Chinese software engineer whom Cain encounters in Cupertino, Calif., the majority Asian-American enclave that she suggests is the introversion capital of the United States. Many of the self-avowed introverts she meets in the course of this book, which combines on-the-scenes reporting with a wide range of social science research and a fair bit of "quiet power" cheerleading, ape extroversion. Though some fake it well enough to make it, going along to get along in a country that rewards the outgoing, something precious, the au-thor says, is lost in this masquerade. Unchecked extroversion - a personality trait Cain ties to ebullience, excitability, dominance, risk-taking, thick skin, boldness and a tendency toward quick thinking and thoughtless action - has actually, she argues, come to pose a real menace of late. The outsize reward-seeking tendencies of the hopelessly outer-directed helped bring us the bank meltdown of 2008 as well as disasters like Enron, she claims. With our economy now in ruins, Cain writes, it's time to establish "a greater balance of power" between those who rush to speak and do and those who sit back and think. Introverts - who, according to Cain, can count among their many virtues the fact that "they're relatively immune to the lures of wealth and fame" - must learn to "embrace the power of quiet." And extroverts should learn to sit down and shut up. Introverts may be an odd audience for a book about power and leadership - concepts that necessarily involve the tiring and unappealing prospect of having power over, and leadership of, other people. Jonathan Rauch, a contributing editor at National Journal, tapped into the inherent humor of this contradiction some years ago, when he wrote a much-read meditation in The Atlantic on introversion. Rauch dreamed about the dawning of an "Introverts' Rights movement," the slogan of which might someday be "Please shush." He got the tone just right: "Remember, someone you know, respect and interact with every day is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts." "Quiet," a long and ploddingly earnest book, would have greatly benefited from some of this levity. But for Cain, the perils of introversion are no laughing matter. Her interest in writing on the subject, she relates, stemmed from her own agonizing difficulties with public speaking - an aversion to putting herself "out there," which made Harvard Law School such a trial that she once threw up on the way to class. Her Cupertino "introverts" (who, I think, are probably better understood as sharing a cultural background rather than a near-universal personality trait) feel unappreciated, undervalued, resentful of their extroverted (and non-Asian) fellow students and colleagues who noisily "talk nonsense," as a Taiwanese-born Cupertino woman puts it, and still get ahead. Her "extroverts" are, often enough, obnoxious fools: Stanford students stripping naked and running down a San Francisco street as part of a freshman "icebreaking" event; a charismatic self-help guru, raking in the dough as he flashes his too-white teeth and sells the secrets of his success to the constitutionally less exuberant. It would be easy to blame people like this for the decline of our civilization if they were, in fact, typical. But, of course, they aren't. Cain, who left a career in corporate law and consulting for a quieter life of writing at home with her family, is at her best on the subject of children. Her accounts of introverted kids misunderstood and mishandled by their parents should give pause, for she rightly notes that introversion in children (often incorrectly viewed as shyness) is in some ways threatening to the adults around them. Indeed, in an age when kids are increasingly herded into classroom "pods" for group work, Cain's insights into the stresses of nonstop socializing for some children are welcome; her advice that parents should choose to view their introverted offspring's social style with understanding rather than fear is well worth hearing. However useful and astute her observations and advice regarding introverted kids, though, Cain's book is about adults, and on this population, unfortunately, she's a whole lot less convincing. For one thing, her definition of introversion - a temperamental inner-directedness first identified as a core personality trait by Carl Jung in 1921 - widens constantly; by the end of the book, it has expanded to include all who are "reflective, cerebral, bookish, unassuming, sensitive, thoughtful, serious, contemplative, subtle, introspective, inner-directed, gentle, calm, modest, solitude-seeking, shy, risk-averse, thin-skinned." This widening of the definition makes introversion so broad a category, including, basically, all that is wise and good, that it's largely meaningless, except as yet another vehicle for promoting self-esteem: "a very empowering lens through which to view your personality," as Cain puts it. Another problem with Cain's argument is her assumption that most introverts are actually suffering in their self-esteem. This may be true in the sorts of environments - Harvard Business School, corporate boardrooms, executive suites - that she knows best and appears to spend most of her time thinking about. Had she spent more time in other sorts of places, among other types of people - in research laboratories, for example, or among economists rather than businessmen and women - she would undoubtedly have discovered a world of introverts quite contented with who they are, and who feel that the world has been good to them. The need to dress up any exploration of a social or psychological phenomenon in go-go language, making interesting observations or reflections the basis for something like a new social movement ("Introverts of the World, Unite!" as The Atlantic headlined a follow-up interview with Rauch), is particularly American, and can be as noisily grating as the compulsory extroversion Cain deplores. "Quiet" is full of gratuitous sloganeering: "Love is essential; gregariousness is optional." "The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting." Such writing offsets Cain's serious research rather badly. A more quiet argument would have been much more effective. Introverts must learn to 'embrace the power of quiet.' And extroverts should learn to sit down and shut up. Judith Warner is the author, most recently, of "We've Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication."
Guardian Review
When you're at a party, do you suddenly feel the desperate urge to escape somewhere quiet such as a toilet cubicle and just sit there? Until I read Quiet, I thought it was just me. I'd see other partygoers grow increasingly effervescent as the night wore on and wonder why I felt so compelled to go home. I put it down to perhaps there not being enough iron in my diet. But it's not just me. It's a trait shared by introverts the world over. We feel this way because our brains are sensitive to overstimulation. I am genuinely astonished by this news. In fact, I read much of Susan Cain's book shaking my head in wonder and thinking: "So that's why I'm like that! It's because I'm an introvert! Now it's fine for me to turn down party invitations. I never have to go to another party again!" Cain is an introvert. It has always been, she writes, "private occasions that make me feel connected to the joys and sorrows of the world, often in the form of communication with writers and musicians I'll never meet in person". She's an introvert in a world that, she argues, excessively and misguidedly respects extroverts. We make them our bosses and our political leaders. We foolishly admire their self-help books, such as How to Win Friends and Influence People. Before the industrial revolution, she writes, American self-help books extolled character. Nowadays it's personality. We introverts attempt to emulate extroverts, and the stress of not being "true to ourselves" can make us physically and mentally ill. One introvert Cain knew spent so much of his adult life trying to adhere to the extrovert ideal he ended up catching double pneumonia. This would have been avoided if he'd spent time recharging his batteries in toilet cubicles, and so on. At the Harvard Business School, socialising is "an extreme sport". Extroverts are more likely to get book deals and art exhibitions than their introverted counterparts. Cain had to persuade a publisher she could conquer her stage fright and promote herself at book festivals before they agreed to take her on. In America, extroverted parents have been known to send their introverted children to psychiatrists to have their introversion "treated" out of them. We think extroverts are great because they're charismatic and chatty and self-assured, but in fact they're comparatively narcissistic and unthoughtful and we're committing a grave error structuring our society around their garrulous blah. Most egregiously, we form our workplaces around the extrovert ideal. I like her nightmare descriptions of open-plan offices where group brainstorming sessions descend on the startled introvert like flash-storms. Group-think favours the dominant extrovert. The loudest, most socially confident and quickest on their feet win the day, whereas the contemplative and quietly well-informed tend not to get a word in. School classrooms are increasingly designed to reflect this flawed environment. Children sit in pods facing each other and are rewarded for being outgoing rather than original. "You Can't Ask a Teacher for Help Unless Everyone in Your Group Has the Same Question" read a sign in one New York classroom she visited. All this even though Gandhi and Rosa Parks and Steve Wozniak and JK Rowling and Eleanor Roosevelt have described themselves as introverts, at their best when solitary. I finished Quiet a month ago and I can't get it out of my head. It is in many ways an important book - so persuasive and timely and heartfelt it should inevitably effect change in schools and offices. It's also a genius idea to write a book that tells introverts - a vast proportion of the reading public - how awesome and undervalued we are. I'm thrilled to discover that some of the personality traits I had found shameful are actually indicators that I'm amazing. It's a Female Eunuch for anxious nerds. I'm not surprised it shot straight to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list. Cain says we're "especially empathic". We think in an "unusually complex fashion". We prefer discussing "values and morality" to small talk about the weather. We "desire peace". We're "modest". The introvert child is an "orchid - who wilts easily", is prone to "depression, anxiety and shyness, but under the right conditions can grow strong and magnificent". When I get to this part I think: Yes! We are like orchids! With good parenting we can become "exceedingly kind, conscientious and successful at the things that matter to us". Then I feel embarrassed that I derived pleasure from being compared to an orchid and I realise that sometimes Cain succumbs to the kind of narcissistic rhetoric she eschews in extroverts. Still: her suggestions on how to redress the balance and make the world a bit more introvert-friendly are charmingly cautious. The way forward, she argues, is to create offices that have open-plan bits for the extroverts and nooks and crannies where the quiet people can be quiet. A bit like the Pixar offices. In this she reminds me of the similarly measured Jonathan Safran Foer, whose anti-meat lectures climax in a suggestion that we should try if possible to eat one or two vegetarian meals a week. Give me this kind of considered good sense over showy radical polemicism any day. But sometimes her brilliant ideas aren't written quite so brilliantly. Her book can be a bit of a slog, not always a page turner. I wish she'd spent a bit more time adventuring and a bit less time analysing and philosophising and citing vast armies of psychologists. I love feeling her pain when she journeys out of her comfort zone to "life coaching" conventions. But those adventures vanish as the book wears on, and it starts to drag a little, especially during the many chapters about how brain scans seem to demonstrate neurological differences between extroverts and introverts. I don't know why popular psychology books feel so compelled these days to cite endless fMRI studies. As any neurologist will tell you, we still have very little idea about why certain bits of our brains light up under various circumstances. And there's a bigger nagging thought I couldn't shake throughout the book. It began during the preface, in which Cain prints an "Are You an Introvert?" checklist. She lists 20 statements. The more we answer "true" the more introverted we are: "I often let calls go through to voice mail. I do my best work on my own. I don't enjoy multitasking. I seem to care less than my peers about wealth, fame and status . . ." At the bottom of the quiz she mentions: "If you found yourself with a roughly equal number of true and false answers, then you may be an ambivert - yes, there really is such a word." I do the test. I answer "true" to exactly half the questions. Even though I'm in many ways a textbook introvert (my crushing need for "restorative niches" such as toilet cubicles is eerie) I'm actually an ambivert. I do the test on my wife. She answers true to exactly half the questions too. We're both ambiverts. Then I do the test on my son. I don't get to the end because to every question - "I prefer one-on-one conversations to group activities. I enjoy solitude . . ." - he replies: "Sometimes. It depends." So he's also an ambivert. In the Ronson household we're 100% ambivert. We ambiverts don't get another mention in the book. Even for a writer like Cain, who is mostly admirably unafraid of grey areas, we ambiverts are too grey. Her thesis - built on the assumption that almost everyone in the world can be squeezed into one of two boxes - may topple if it turns out that loads of us are essentially ambiverts. I suspect there are a lot of ambiverts out there. Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test is published by Picador. To order Quiet for pounds 14 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop - Jon Ronson Caption: Captions: Early learning . . . modern classrooms are designed for extroverts When you're at a party, do you suddenly feel the desperate urge to escape somewhere quiet such as a toilet cubicle and just sit there? Until I read Quiet, I thought it was just me. I'd see other partygoers grow increasingly effervescent as the night wore on and wonder why I felt so compelled to go home. I put it down to perhaps there not being enough iron in my diet. But it's not just me. It's a trait shared by introverts the world over. We feel this way because our brains are sensitive to overstimulation. I am genuinely astonished by this news. In fact, I read much of Susan Cain's book shaking my head in wonder and thinking: "So that's why I'm like that! It's because I'm an introvert! Now it's fine for me to turn down party invitations. I never have to go to another party again!" Cain says we're "especially empathic". We think in an "unusually complex fashion". We prefer discussing "values and morality" to small talk about the weather. We "desire peace". We're "modest". The introvert child is an "orchid - who wilts easily", is prone to "depression, anxiety and shyness, but under the right conditions can grow strong and magnificent". I do the test. I answer "true" to exactly half the questions. Even though I'm in many ways a textbook introvert (my crushing need for "restorative niches" such as toilet cubicles is eerie) I'm actually an ambivert. I do the test on my wife. She answers true to exactly half the questions too. We're both ambiverts. Then I do the test on my son. I don't get to the end because to every question - "I prefer one-on-one conversations to group activities. I enjoy solitude . . ." - he replies: "Sometimes. It depends." So he's also an ambivert. - Jon Ronson.
Kirkus Review
Jersey Shore narcissism and American Idol fame really be inhabited by reserved, sensitive types? According to Cain, yes--and we better start valuing their insight. Extroverts have their place, but things can quickly go haywire when we start confusing assertiveness with competence--the economic meltdown on Wall Street was the most stunning recent example. Had there been a few more conscientious, contemplative introverts in the boardroom (and had they made themselves heard), Cain writes, the country's fortunes would now be decidedly different. But today's prevailing susceptibility to "reward sensitivity," as embodied by alpha-dog Wall Street types, wasn't always the norm. Cain provides fascinating insight into how the United States shifted from an introvert-leaning "cult of character" to an extrovert-leaning "cult of personality" ruled by the larger-than-life Tony Robbinses of the world. Readers will learn that the tendency for some to be reserved is actually hardwired, and as every evolutionary biologist will tell you, innate characteristics are there for a reason--to help humans survive and thrive. The author also boldly tackles introverts themselves, as well as the ambivalence many often feel about being relegated to the corner. "Stick to your guns," writes fellow introvert Cain. The author's insights are so rich that she could pen two separate books: one about parenting an introverted child, and another about how to make an introvert/extrovert relationship work. An intriguing and potentially life-altering examination of the human psyche that is sure to benefit both introverts and extroverts alike.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
The introvert/extrovert dichotomy is easily stereotyped in psychological literature: extroverts are buoyant and loud, introverts are shy and nerdy. Here, former corporate lawyer and negotiations consultant Cain gives a more nuanced portrait of introversion. Introverts are by nature more pensive, quiet, and solitary, but they can also act extroverted for the pursuit of their passions. Cain describes and explicates the introvert personality by citing much research (at times so much that readers may be confused about what she is explaining) and going undercover, at one point immersing herself at a Harvard Business School student center and, in a very amusing chapter, at a Tony Robbins seminar, among other case studies. Cain's conclusion is that the introversion or extroversion personality trait is not as simple as an on/off switch but a much more complex expression of a personality. VERDICT This book is a pleasure to read and will make introverts and extroverts alike think twice about the best ways to be themselves and interact with differing personality types. Recommended to all readers.-Maryse Breton, Bibliotheque et Archives nationales du Quebec, Montreal (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
