The Quiet Before
On the unexpected origins of radical ideas
Published on 17. February 2022
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-1-78763-620-0 (ISBN)
Description
'The Quiet Before is a fascinating and important exploration of how ideas that change the world incubate and spread.' Steven Pinker
'Filled with insightful analysis and colourful storytelling... Rarely does a book give you a new way of looking at social change. This one does.' Walter Isaacson
Why do some radical ideas make history while others founder?
We tend to think of revolutions as loud: frustrations and demands shouted in the streets. But the ideas fuelling them have traditionally been conceived in much quieter spaces, in the small, secluded corners where a vanguard can whisper among themselves, imagine alternate realities, and deliberate over how to get there. This extraordinary book is a search for those spaces, over centuries and across continents, and a warning that they might soon go extinct.
The Quiet Before is a grand panorama, stretching from the seventeenth century correspondence that jumpstarted the scientific revolution to the groundswell of the Chartists, the liberation movement on the Gold Coast and the underground network of samizdat publications in Soviet Russia - even the encrypted apps used by epidemiologists fighting the pandemic in the shadow of an inept administration. Beckerman shows that defining social movements-from decolonization to feminism-thrive when they are given the time and space to gestate.
Now, Facebook and Twitter are replacing these productive, private spaces with monolithic platforms that are very public and endlessly networked. Why did the Arab Spring fall apart and Occupy Wall Street never gain traction? Has Black Lives Matter lived up to its full potential? Beckerman reveals what this new social media ecosystem lacks - everything from patience to focus - and offers a recipe for growing radical ideas again.
Lyrical and profound, The Quiet Before looks to the past to help us imagine a different future.
'Filled with insightful analysis and colourful storytelling... Rarely does a book give you a new way of looking at social change. This one does.' Walter Isaacson
Why do some radical ideas make history while others founder?
We tend to think of revolutions as loud: frustrations and demands shouted in the streets. But the ideas fuelling them have traditionally been conceived in much quieter spaces, in the small, secluded corners where a vanguard can whisper among themselves, imagine alternate realities, and deliberate over how to get there. This extraordinary book is a search for those spaces, over centuries and across continents, and a warning that they might soon go extinct.
The Quiet Before is a grand panorama, stretching from the seventeenth century correspondence that jumpstarted the scientific revolution to the groundswell of the Chartists, the liberation movement on the Gold Coast and the underground network of samizdat publications in Soviet Russia - even the encrypted apps used by epidemiologists fighting the pandemic in the shadow of an inept administration. Beckerman shows that defining social movements-from decolonization to feminism-thrive when they are given the time and space to gestate.
Now, Facebook and Twitter are replacing these productive, private spaces with monolithic platforms that are very public and endlessly networked. Why did the Arab Spring fall apart and Occupy Wall Street never gain traction? Has Black Lives Matter lived up to its full potential? Beckerman reveals what this new social media ecosystem lacks - everything from patience to focus - and offers a recipe for growing radical ideas again.
Lyrical and profound, The Quiet Before looks to the past to help us imagine a different future.
Reviews / Votes
How does true social change occur? In this brilliant book filled with insightful analysis and colourful storytelling, Gal Beckerman shows that new ideas need to incubate through thoughtful discussions in order to create sustained movements. Today's social media hothouses, unfortunately, tend to produce flash mobs that flame out. We need to regain intimate forms of communication if we want to nurture real transformation. Rarely does a book give you a new way of looking at social change. This one does. -- <b>Walter Isaacson</b>, author of <i>The Code Breakers</i> Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come, but how do ideas ever get to the point where their time has come? Ideas have to be conceived, improved, and accepted by people, and we know little about how this happens. The Quiet Before is a fascinating and important exploration of how ideas that change the world incubate and spread. -- <b>Steven Pinker</b>, author of <i>Rationality</i> The Quiet Before is that rare book: arresting in its premise, supported by historical examples, and relevant to right now. Beckerman takes a close look at the media that led to the 'changed minds' of past revolutions, then challenges us to approach today's media with new eyes. How can we make it serve our urgent human purposes-among these the rethinking of human equality and the possibility of democracy? I loved it. -- <b>Sherry Turkle</b>, author of <i>The Empathy Diaries</i> Both deep and urgent, Beckerman revisits past revolutions from the perspective of the communication tools that enabled them, providing insight into how we can better navigate the promise and peril of the technologies shaping our current moment. -- <b>Cal Newport</b>, author of </i>Digital Minimalism</i> The Quiet Before is a remarkable, engrossing account of the subterranean routes by which historical change takes place, from the adoption of universal (male) suffrage to #MeToo, and an examination of the limitations of social media in achieving real social transformation. Gal Beckerman writes with lucidity and grace, folding a formidable amount of research and original reflection into a compulsively readable narrative. This is a riveting and timely book, one that should provoke heated Zoom conversations nationwide. -- <b>Daphne Merkin</b>, author of <i>22 Minutes of Unconditional Love</i> All the myriad events fashioned by humans to create the world's history - be they wars or revolutions, artistic movements or responses to pandemics - have their points of origin in discussions, in discourses, in polemics, in simple statements nailed to church doors, in furtive comments uttered in basement bars, or in realizations made while waiting for traffic lights to change. In this wonderfully original and captivating book, Gal Beckerman reminds us that while natural events are so often announced with an unanticipated bang, human-made happenstances can more commonly trace their beginnings to little more than a cascade of gentle whispers. -- <b>Simon Winchester</b>, author of <i>The Professor and the Madman</i> What a beautiful and humane book. The Quiet Before is a tour de force page-turner of an intellectual adventure story,one that hopscotches from medieval Provence to pre-fascist Florence to 21st-century Charlottesville, with stops in Moscow, Cairo and many other exquisitely rendered settings in between. Beckerman is an infectious guide, wearing his learning lightly as he reveals some of the places and personalities that have incubated the 'common world' we now cohabit. -- Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of <i>Self-Portrait in Black and White</i> In this penetrating feat of the intellect,Gal Beckerman explains the long and complicated relationship between the envisioning of new principles and the realization of such principles in the form of social transformation. Deploying a stunningly diverse set of narratives,he builds up evidence that the process is long and slow and nuanced. We tend to vest our admiration for-or dismay about-the work of activists who turn ideas into actions, but in fact, it is those who conceive those ideas and those who gradually disseminate them who may be the greatest heroes. This book should be read by anyone interested in thinking. -- Andrew Solomon, author of <i>Far from the Tree</i> We can't imagine a better future because we can't imagine anything much. Creativity will arise not from still greater frenzy, but from reflection on where we are and how we got here. Gal Beckerman shows the way. -- <b>Tim Snyder</b>, author of <i>On Tyranny</i> The moment for this book is now as we navigate this new era of virtual interactions and wonder how we got here and where we're headed. -- <b>Susan Orlean</b>, author of <i>On Animals</i> The Quiet Before is a splendid and singular history-great storytelling, elegant prose, spanning centuries but extremely timely, connecting dots in fresh and illuminating ways, surprising in its twists and turns, inspiring without trying too hard to inspire. -- Kurt Andersen, author of <i>Evil Geniuses</i> Gal Beckerman's engrossing book only masquerades as a study of media and social change. It's really a series of irresistibly readable nonfiction novellas about unwitting revolutionaries who used new communications technologies to remake the world. -- Judith Shulevitz, author of <i>The Sabbath World</i> From intimate conversations grow world-shaking movements, argues this probing intellectual history... Beckerman unearths fascinating lore about these ideological hothouses, from the Futurists' love triangles in early 20th-century Italy to the alt-right's public-messaging strategies. The result is a timely and stimulating take on how the fringe infiltrates the mainstream. * Publishers Weekly, starred review * An engaging treatise on the power of communication in social movements, historically and in our current moment... With a sharp eye for telling detail, the author uses direct, at times explicit, quotes from primary sources. At times witty, at times cautious, the text is sincere and thoughtful as Beckerman questions what it has meant to form a community in the past and what it means today. An invigorating text ripe with pertinent information about the methods of connection that can lead to real change. * Kirkus * Like other works on the "smart thinking" shelf that swing between cultural history and how-to manual, The Quiet Before scavenges past events and present trends on a pattern-seeking quest. Authors such as Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Johnson have perfected the formula. To his credit, Beckerman puts a much less instrumental spin on his disparate material as he advocates for "built-in slowness"... The Quiet Before can't offer any fail-safe recipe for slow-cooked innovation. It can help readers to imagine - and join - a better kind of conversation in the kitchen of ideas. * Financial Times * [An] engaging study... The Quiet Before is not a treatise or big-picture history. Open-minded and curious, it suggests rather than argues, and never shouts. Those are virtues easy to overlook. * The Economist * An elegantly argued and exuberantly narrated book... humanized by vivid biographical vignettes... Out of deafened earshot, there is indeed, as Beckerman's title implies, a realm of relative quiet, where millions of connections are daily wired together, and which offer to conversationalists thoughtful rather than thoughtless provocations, solid sources of knowledge rather than fathomless wells of ignorance, and even, every so often, shots of pleasurable illumination. -- Simon Schama * New York Times * Wide ranging, subtly ambitious... He wears his expertise lightly... lead[ing] us on a magical history tour. * New Yorker * A paean to historical misfits and the hard work they put into their crusades... full of rare details such as about the unlikely samizdat-smuggling housewife who boiled contraband pages in a broth when the KGB came knocking. * The Times * The Quiet Before is a quirky, delightful mix of a book that explores the intellectual impulses behind a series of cultural shifts and political revolts occurring across continents and centuries. . . Beckerman's historically expansive case studies and engaging storytelling make The Quiet Before distinct and worthwhile. * Washington Post * [The Quiet Before] at first seems like a Big Idea book, threading together obscure parcels of history into a grand theory of today. But what distinguishes Beckerman's latest . . . is that it has heart and purpose. * Salon *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Transworld Publishers Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
573 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78763-620-0 (9781787636200)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Gal Beckerman is a writer and editor at The New York Times Book Review and a regular contributor to the New Republic and the Wall Street Journal. He has a PhD in media studies from Columbia University and is the author of the award-winning When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone, which was named a best book of the year by the New Yorker and the Washington Post. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters.