The Introvert’s Bible: Quiet by Susan Cain Susan Cain’s Quiet opens on a familiar scene: Rosa Parks’s refusal to relinquish her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama public bus. Most descriptions of this tide-changing event stop there, but Cain goes deeper into the personality of the late civil-rights advocate, and reveals something unexpected: Rosa Parks was an introvert. Parks is not the only introvert to have swayed the course of history; throughout the book, Cain discusses example after example of individuals with “quiet power”. Albert Einstein, Dr. Seuss, J. K. Rowling. With such an honorable registry, surely introverts must be appreciated members of society, right? Wrong. As Cain divulges, introverts are put at a disadvantage from the moment they are born, throughout school, and into the workforce, not by any flaw of their own, but by a society that upholds what Cain calls the “Extrovert Ideal”. From kindergarten to office jobs, it’s safe to say that life in America (and other countries, mainly those in the West) is geared towards the gregarious. Group projects are assigned increasingly more often, the desks in many classrooms are arranged in “pods”, and cubicles are often replaced by open workfloors with not so much as a curtain separating one person from another. All this is out of a …show more content…
Extroverts will likely recognize the behavior described in their friends and family, and be reminded that while extroversion certainly has much to offer, so does introversion. This is a book that intends to improve all aspects of life through appreciation of diverse skills and tendencies, a book that simultaneously calls out the flaws in our culture and shows us the way to fix them. This is a book for everyone, loud or