The Quiet Before
On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas
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3.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • An “elegantly argued and exuberantly narrated” (The New York Times Book Review) look at the building of social movements—from the 1600s to the present—and how current technology is undermining them
“A bravura work of scholarship and reporting, featuring amazing individuals and dramatic events from seventeenth-century France to Rome, Moscow, Cairo, and contemporary Minneapolis.”—Louis Menand, author of The Free World
We tend to think of revolutions as loud: frustrations and demands shouted in the streets. But the ideas fueling 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 about how to achieve their goals. This extraordinary book is a search for those spaces, over centuries and across continents, and a warning that—in a world dominated by social media—they might soon go extinct.
Gal Beckerman, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, takes us back to the seventeenth century, to the correspondence that jump-started the scientific revolution, and then forward through time to examine engines of social change: the petitions that secured the right to vote in 1830s Britain, the zines that gave voice to women’s rage in the early 1990s, and even the messaging apps used by epidemiologists fighting the pandemic in the shadow of an inept administration. In each case, Beckerman shows that our most defining social movements—from decolonization to feminism—were formed in quiet, closed networks that allowed a small group to incubate their ideas before broadcasting them widely.
But Facebook and Twitter are replacing these productive, private spaces, to the detriment of activists around the world. Why did the Arab Spring fall apart? Why did 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From intimate conversations grow world-shaking movements, argues this probing intellectual history. New York Times Book Review editor Beckerman (When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone) surveys small circles that incubated subversive thinking, including 17th-century French polymath Nicolas Peiresc's scientific letter-writing network; Britain's 1839 Chartist campaign for universal suffrage, which galvanized working-class politics; Soviet dissident Natalya Gorbanevskaya's samizdat journal, the Chronicle, which landed her in a psychiatric hospital; and the 1990s feminist punk scene sparked by the zine Riot Grrrl. He also investigates the internet's role in modern-day movements: the Facebook page that publicized Egypt's Tahrir Square demonstration; the Discord chat rooms where alt-right activists organized the 2017 Unite-the-Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.; and the Red Dawn email group of health experts who brainstormed Covid-19 interventions. Drawing on communications theory, Beckerman analyzes these intellectual channels for their ability to foster accessible but private conversations that shape innovative ideas, though he's skeptical of social media as an organizing tool because it's too public, volatile, emotional, and virtual to nurture serious thinking and politics. 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.
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