A review by cdjdhj
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

3.0

In this book, author Susan Cain argues that we owe many of the great contributions of society to introverts - people who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion and who favor working on their own instead of collaborating. Cain says that society dramatically undervalues introverts and loses much in so doing. The book was a mix of personal anecdotes and case studies mixed with scientific research and a good deal of theory and conjecture. It ends by being a sort of "self-help book" for introverts and their friends, parents and lovers. While appearing to be exhaustively researched and annotated, this book took me much longer to read than I expected - it wasn't because I was "savoring" every word. The historical and personal stories of real life introverts were interesting, but the author gets totally bogged down in describing scientific theories and experiments that, the author explains, do not necessarily apply all of the time or even most of the time to people who might be classified as introverts and extroverts. I learned some interesting things, especially about myself), while reading this book, however I was also totally bored by a good part of it. The scientific data went on and on only to have the author tell how the findings may or may not apply. Cain seems not to be able to decide whether to make the book a really long scientific journal article or a pop-psychology self-help book, so she tries to do both. While the book contains interesting parts and sections, it was, at least for me, not a compelling page-turner or the "fascinating read" that the front cover promised.