Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain

source: purchased
title: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
author: Susan Cain /Twitter
genre: non-fiction/self-help
pages: 360
published: January 29, 2013
first line: Montgomery, Alabama.
rated: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars

blurb:
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. 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, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.

My thoughts:

It took me a while to get this review up because I truly enjoyed this book and I wanted to write an articulated post without rambling. This is the kind of read that begs to be discussed and I definitely could go on and on about it.

Being a natural born introvert, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking grabbed my attention straight away. Author Susan Cain covers intro and extroversion in great detail here and as I read I could relate time and again to what she was saying.

The author highlights famous introverts such as Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt and shares how their quiet strength helped changed the course of history. This quote below sums it up and the author really gets it when saying that “introverts and extroverts are differently social”.

Probably the most common- and damaging-misunderstanding about personality type is that introverts are antisocial and extroverts are prosocial. But as we’ve seen, neither formulation is correct; introverts and extroverts are differently social.
p.240, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain