Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Brace yourself. This is long. My credentials match the author's and I'm at least as well researched as she is, so I feel confident when I say this book muddies the waters more than parts them on the subject of introversion/extroversion. The opening chapters are focused and insightful as they detail our society's evolution from a character-drive culture to a personality-driven culture. You only have to look to reality TV to see that she's right. And her characterization of Harvard Business School as little more than a networking hothouse is spot on. You can be wrong or at least completely full of crap, and so long as you can sell it, people will buy in and give you money. If I could say that in Latin, I'd suggest that as the new HBS motto. But then Ms. Cain begins to tangle the concepts of shyness, conflict-avoidance, fear of public speaking, and being skinny and wearing thick glasses with introversion. These ideas are stereotypes, and not at all interchangeable. From here her data is so scattered and misinterpreted that I started to wonder if the author is spinning a toastmaster tale about her own introverted personality and experiences in the world, and has (until this point) done the song and dance so convincingly that I bought in, and it's only now as she contradicts her own earlier assertions I can see the truth. She can't hold a tune. Shyness is not interchangeable with introversion. Shyness is characterized by a fear of new social situations. To put it in personal terms, as the authors does throughout the book, I am very introverted and yet I love new people, new foods, new ideas, new everything. I also have a wide variety of interesting friends. I just don't like to experience them all at once. I can't stand the idea of a clique and fade quickly at big, loud impersonal parties. I like to see my friends one at a time or in very small groups with breaks in between. I'm not shy in any way. And I'm friendly when I'm in the mood to make acquaintances. I'm just not in the mood very often. Fear is not the same as disinterest. Stage fright, or the fear of public speaking, is also not a sign of introversion. I have given seminars for years and can speak after planning an elaborate speech or right off the cuff. And I can participate in brainstorming sessions and lively debates in seminars. I'm usually quick-witted and articulate. I'm just exhausted afterwards and require a long period of recovery. I'm not the one who organizes happy hour after a class. I'm the one who goes home to veg in silence, without even the energy to discuss my day with my partner or our children. I feel overloaded, overstimulated and I need time to decompress. If I don't get it, I become panicky and upset. And if I'm deprived of solitude over time, I will become physically ill. But I'm neither afraid nor slow to speak my mind. And I'm not a conflict-avoider. It just depletes me, rather than energizes me. And finally, here comes the shocker: I'm not unattractive or "nerdy" as she calls it in any way. In fact in high school, while I wasn't popular or the life of the party, I always had a boyfriend and was even crowned town beauty queen. I aced my one on one interview, filled out a prom dress well, and wrote an award-winning fiction piece that impressed the judges enough to put me in the finals of a pageant. And then when I answered their final question on stage in front of the entire town, I was thoughtful and articulate. I won the crown and a scholarship. My parents and boyfriend wanted to celebrate with a big party. I declined and spent the afternoon in my room watching movies. I let them answer the phone and accept my congratulations. I was spent from my efforts and needed time to recharge. Being an introvert means that you expend more energy in social situations than you extract. An extrovert goes to a party or participates in a brainstorming session and feels energized. An introvert goes to a party and participates in a brainstorming session and feels drained. Introverts need a period of solitude to recharge and their overall social needs are lower than extroverts. My husband is an extrovert. He's loves to socialize. The more he does, the more full of energy and ideas he is. Our two children have inherited and expressed our opposite temperaments in unique ways. Our daughter is an extrovert like her father, but she's also shy. She's fearful of new situations, food, rejection, but she's incredibly expressive about it and craves companionship and social interaction at every turn. When she does things alone, she claims she's bored and loses motivation and energy easily. When she's with a group, she's a powerhouse, more apt to overcome her shyness when she's around other people. Our son is the opposite. He's charming and polite, but prefers to work and learn alone. He's extremely popular with his peers, but he rarely requests playdates or accepts invitations. After school each day, he needs to spend an hour playing by himself or reading before he can interact positively with the family. If he's having a problem, he does best when we say very little and let him alone to work it out in his own head. My daughter needs to talk out her problems ad nauseum. Both have high self-esteem and do not envy the other's level of social activity. Overall this book started out with a lot of promise. I do believe our society has become beholden to the cult of personality. Cain cites the internet as a originally being a haven for introverts, but I believe even that has changed. Twitter and Facebook are mass social vehicles reaching the most amount of people with the least amount of effort. It's a barrage of snarky comment pissing contests and meaningless small talk, advice, and platitudes or fishing expeditions for such things-- the very antithesis of what introverts value in their social connections. Additionally, they've made it so anyone can manufacture a personality and life for the sole purpose of garnering such attention, but one that has little to do with the reality of its users' daily lives. If you're taking the picture and posting it on Instagram, then you can't possibly be participating in the event fully and authentically. Social media has become the embodiment of the toastmasters challenge-- lie convincingly enough and it will become true. I'm not entirely sure the rise of this phenomenon is about extroversion so much as narcissism and histrionics gone wild. I don't think Ms. Cain was able to maintain her lie or profound misunderstanding about being an introvert. And when she starts using the terms shy, nerdy and socially inept interchangeably with introverted, her slip begins to show and never more so when she characterizes the entire Chinese people as introverted (cultures that place high value on restraint have little bearing on heritable temperament traits of individuals) or gives pop psychology parenting advice like "Don't just accept your child for who s/he is. Treasure them." If you want a good read about this subject, try Daniel Goleman or Carol Dweck. Read the astute review of this book in the New York Times or try Psychology Today's Introvert's Corner.