Synopsis (Credit: www.amazon.co.uk)

Our lives are driven by a fact that most of us can't name and don't understand. It defines who our friends and lovers are, which careers we choose, and whether we blush when we're embarrassed. That fact is whether we're an introvert or an extrovert.

The introvert/extrovert divide is the most fundamental dimension of personality. And at least a third of us are on the introverted side. Some of the world's most talented people are introverts. Without them we wouldn't have the Apple computer, the theory of relativity or Van Gogh's sunflowers.

Yet extroverts have taken over. Shyness, sensitivity and seriousness are often seen as being negative. Introverts feel reproached for being the way they are.

In Quiet, Susan Cain shows how the brain chemistry of introverts and extroverts differs, and how society misunderstands and undervalues introverts. She gives introverts the tools to better understand themselves and take full advantage of their strengths.

(Received from Horinkie as a Random Act of BookCrossing Kindness.)

The book forms part of my permanent collection.

A species in which everyone was General Patton would not succeed, any more than would a race in which everyone was Vincent van Gogh. I prefer to think that the planet needs athletes, philosophers, sex symbols, painters, scientists; it needs the warmhearted, the hardhearted, the coldhearted, and the weakhearted. It needs those who can devote their lives to studying how many droplets of water are secreted by the salivary glands of dogs under which circumstances, and it needs those who can capture the passing impression of cherry blossoms in a fourteen-syllable poem or devote twenty-five pages to the dissection of a small boy's feelings as he lies in bed in the dark waiting for his mother to kiss him goodnight ... Indeed the presence of outstanding strengths presupposes that energy needed in other areas has been channeled away from them.

— Allen Shawn

In 2012 I watched a video of Susan Cain: her TED talk on The power of introverts. I added the book to my wishlist and forgot about it. So, it was a complete surprise to receive a brand new, hard-cover copy of the book as RABCK from Horinkie more than a year later.

The book itself did not disappoint. It is well researched and meticulously laid out, with 47 pages of reference notes of the kind that invites further reading. Yet it never reads like a thesis. The author's style is relaxed and each finding or argument is backed up with an anecdote or example. Ultimately she gives so much of herself in the book that it should be easy for all, irrespective of where they find themselves on the introvert-extrovert scale, to relate with what she says.

On a personal level it was astonishing for me to realise how much of an introvert I was. A relief as well: it explained many of the traits in me that I've always regarded as 'probably selfish and asocial'.

I would recommend the book to all. It's definitely not only for the shy or introverted.