Susan Cain, Quiet
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A rallying call for introverts everywhere to…be quiet
America, argues author Susan Cain, is a land of extroverts. This will not be news to anyone who has had a teacher or boss badger them to “come out of your shell” and “seize the day,” but what might be surprising is Cain’s unabashed support for the introvert lifestyle. We’ve been socially conditioned to equate “outgoing” with “good,” and Quiet is Cain’s largely successful defense of anyone who ever just wanted to be left alone. Cain makes a good case that America evolved into an extrovert paradise right around the beginning of the 20th century, when Carl Jung invented the personality types “introvert” and “extrovert” and Dale Carnegie built an empire teaching people how to release their inner chatterbox. Once these values became entrenched in the culture – and enshrined at the top of the corporate ladder – says Cain, they became synonymous with success and virtue, forcing introverts like herself to change their ways. Relying on everyone from Warren Buffett to Rosa Parks to make her case, Cain here points out the virtues of introversion, even going so far as to argue that our economy might not be in the pits if there were a few more introverts in the board rooms. Though Cain can occasionally overreach – by the end of the book it seems that all the good people in the world are introverts – this passionate, earnest defense of quiet people is a necessary antidote to the triumph of extroversion in American daily life.
