Gal Beckerman - The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas

The Quiet Before is a splendid and singular historygreat 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 Evil Geniuses

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 todays media with new eyes. How can we make it serve our urgent human purposesamong these the rethinking of human equality and the possibility of democracy? I loved it.

Sherry Turkle , author of The Empathy Diaries

All the myriad events fashioned by humans to create the worlds historybe they wars or revolutions, artistic movements or responses to pandemicshave 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.

Simon Winchester , author of The Professor and the Madman

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 twenty-first-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 Self-Portrait in Black and White

We cant imagine a better future because we cant 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.

Timothy Snyder , author of On Tyranny

The Quiet Before is a remarkable, entirely 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.

Daphne Merkin , author of 22 Minutes of Unconditional Love

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.

Cal Newport , author of Digital Minimalism

Gal Beckermans engrossing book only masquerades as a study of media and social change. Its really a series of irresistibly readable nonfiction novellas about unwitting revolutionaries who used new communications technologies to remake the world.

Judith Shulevitz, author of The Sabbath World

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.

Steven Pinker , author of Rationality

How does true social change occur? In this brilliant book filled with insightful analysis and colorful storytelling, Gal Beckerman shows that new ideas need to incubate through thoughtful discussions in order to create sustained movements. Todays 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.

Walter Isaacson , author of The Code Breaker

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 foror dismay aboutthe 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 Far from the Tree

CHANGETHE KIND THAT topples social norms and uproots orthodoxieshappens slowly at first. People dont just cut off the kings head. For years and even decades they gossip about him, imagine him naked and ridiculous, demote him from deity to fallible mortal (with a head, which can be cut). This is true for revolutions of all sorts. Slavery exists. And then a small group of people begin worrying among themselves about the moral blight of humans owning other humans, weighing what might be done. Their talking transforms them into a group with a purpose, abolition, and discussion eventually bubbles up into action and then into the changing of minds and, eventually, laws.