Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

I think this is a book that everyone should read or listen to. I was a little unsure with how it started that I would enjoy it but that changed fast. Susan Cain was executed this book perfectly and had good things that would help an extroverted person understand how introverted people think and what they need and, while not the main point she does well at explaining the extroverted needs as well. She covers everything from personal life, relationships, friends and the workplace.

If I had to pick one book this year that I wanted everyone to read it would be this. So many times while I was reading this I found myself thinking "that's exactly it!". Please pick this up if you are even slightly curious.

As an introvert this book made me feel seen. I love that she didn’t cast introverted people as being wrong or needing to change. It helped me understand and accept and love who I am. We need more books like this that help people understand themselves rather than self help books that force people to be who they are not.

I think I just wasn't in the mood for this -- or it would have been better in long-article format. I didn't get very far in, but I liked the stories about Tony Robbins and the like more than paragraph after paragraph of "sometimes extroverts, sometimes introverts."

This was a very informative and interesting read. As a clinical psychologist, I was familiar with most of the information presented. Does the author take some liberties with her analyses of psychological studies to make her points? Yes, but she also provides the information in an interesting and easy-to-read format that I appreciated. (Probably one of my favorite parts was when during an interview with a psychologist researcher she makes the mistake of equating correlation with causation and greatly over-simplifies what the researcher is proposing at which point he simply yells "NO! NO! NO!" at her).

I am an introvert and I feel I understand myself a little bit better after reading this book. I also understand why some parts of my childhood school days (group projects, ugh!) made me miserable, while other times I loved school and was highly successful. I have always had an extreme hatred for gambling, and this book helped elucidate why for me, which was a theory I had not heard before (extroverts are more reward-sensitive whereas introverts are more threat-sensitive). And helped explained my discomfort in modern day evangelical Christian churches.

What I found most fascinating was her thesis on the development of the Culture of Personality and why the Extrovert Ideal has became the norm in the United States from a historical/sociocultural perspective.

Read this book if you want to discover more about yourself (whether or not you are an introvert or an extrovert or a mixture of both), American culture, cross-culture differences in personality traits, and how to survive in our modern Culture of Personality.