quiet-the-power-of-introverts-in-a-world-that-cant-stop-talking-susan-cain

Kagan ushers me inside his office in
Harvard’s William James Hall, surveying
me unblinkingly as I sit down: not
unkind, but definitely discerning. I had
imagined him as a gentle, white-labcoated
scientist in a cartoon, pouring
chemicals from one test tube to another
until—poof! Now, Susan, you know exactly
who you are. But this isn’t the
mild-mannered old professor I’d imagined.
Ironically for a scientist whose
books are infused with humanism and
who describes himself as having been
an anxious, easily frightened boy, I find
him downright intimidating. I kick off
our interview by asking a background
question whose premise he disagrees
with. “No, no, no!” he thunders, as if I
weren’t sitting just across from him.
The high-reactive side of my personality
kicks into full gear. I’m always
soft-spoken, but now I have to force my
311/929