Quiet - Susan Cain

Quiet by Susan Cain is a look into the world of introverts and attempts to demonstrate the power and value that they bring to a world that according to the author is biased towards extroverts. Predictably the book discusses the challenges faced by introverts in society, the cultural norms across the world that lead to extroverts being favored  and concludes with some notes on the power of introversion and the need to embrace it. 

The book doesn't seem to be backed by any serious studies and rather seems very anecdotal based on the author's own experiences or talks with random people in different settings. Thus it doesn't come across as something that can be taken seriously.  Some of the instances are backed with references like - "said by a 5th grade teacher in a public school" which don't necessarily inspire a lot of confidence. 

There is also a lot of generalization all through the book, which undermines its message. It seems as though in trying to elevate introversion, Cain had to demean extroversion - either knowingly or unknowingly. She seems to draw a fine line between the two categories of people and attributes traits like high sensitivity to one group, with the other group supposedly lacking those traits - either completely or partially? There are statements like how highly sensitive people are not materialistic or hedonistic or how more crimes are done by extroverts or how introverts suffer fewer accidents which of course are not backed by any statistics and are impossible to be accurately classified. 

Overall, in a world full of divisons, it just seems superfluous to add more labels to people. It's an easy read, but not very illuminating.