" A book just about introversion? At first blush, this may seem like a too narrow focus, but according to Cain, this trait is the “single most important aspect of personality.” She makes a good case by listing the various things in life that are linked to the dichotomy of Introversion/Extraversion – choice of friends, career and education, exercise, adultery, risk-taking, delayed gratification, to mention a few."
The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking is about people who are quiet, their qualities, and how society underestimates these people. The book starts with a bang with the example of Rosa Parks who was an African-American woman with a quiet demeanor. The place is Alabama in the 1950s. She is in a segregated bus and when she refuses for not giving a seat to a white person, she is arrested. When she is on stage with Martin Luther King, the crowd becomes motivated to fight against the injustice.
The author, a self-confessed introvert, points out how society is biased against the introvert. From childhood they are taught that to be sociable is to be happy. Introversion is now "somewhere between a disappointment and pathology." The Power of Introverts is not about extrovert-bashing. Extroversion is good, but we have made it into an "oppressive standard" to which introverts must conform.
Seattle Book Review
