Quiet, by Susan Cain.

From the moment I first learned the words introvert and extrovert, I knew which group I definitely fell into. But I thought the definitions of both were simply:

Introvert: n. gets energy from being alone. See: Kim.
Extrovert: n. gets energy from other people. See: what seems to be most of the rest of the world.

This book, Quiet, had been recommended to me a dozen times, and I finally picked it up not expecting that those words would end up meaning much more than than that, but wow was I surprised. Susan Cain goes so deep into many areas that relate to this - such as how different social norms influence what is acceptable behavior. For instance, she spends some time following a few Chinese-Americans who, for example, grew up learning to put more emphasis on listening, asking questions, and putting other people's needs ahead of their own.  This is in contrast to America's "extrovert ideal".

The book beings by exploring an extrovert's world through the eyes of a few lone introverts - like the Harvard Business School, where those who speak the loudest are listened to, not those who speak quietly but have superior ideas. This mentality, so prevalent in business, comes back later on in the book as Cain explores such issues as the recent stock market crash and how dangerous it can turn out to be to only listen to those who speak the loudest. This was a bit of a discouraging foot to start off with for me, since I relate so hard to stories like that. I naturally speak quietly and have to be very conscious to speak above what, to me, sounds like a normal volume.

Once I got past the rocky start I found the rest of the book more engaging. There's a pretty even split of scientific research and stories in here. She describes findings from experiments that actually show differences between introverts' & extroverts' brain activities, balanced by case studies of real people. There are a fair number of well-known people discussed - Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks - which is all very well and good, but it's the ordinary, real people whom I find to be more relatable and so I connect with their stories more.

I was hoping to get a few more concrete takeaways out of this than what ended up being condensed to only a few chapters at the end. Still, I have gained a lot of insight about introverts and which introvert characteristics apply to myself - and to my surprise, not all of them do...

Introverts prefer listening to speaking (definitely me), who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion (I love creating, would prefer to not get the attention for it), and favor working on their own over working in teams (not quite me? Sometimes maybe so, but most of the time I love working in teams, love knowledge-sharing, and love creating something in a team I couldn't have done on my own!).