Penguin Random House: Susan Cain’s BITTERSWEET Coming From Crown in April 2022
Crown, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, has announced that it will publish BITTERSWEET: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain on April 5, 2022. The news was first shared by Susan Cain on social media (on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook), where she also revealed the book’s cover. BITTERSWEET will be published in hardcover and digital formats by Crown, and an audio edition, read by the author, will be simultaneously released by Penguin Random House Audio. The book is edited by Crown SVP and Publisher Gillian Blake.
With the 2012 publication of her #1 New York Times bestselling book QUIET, Susan Cain began a global movement that changed the way society views introversion. With over 4 million copies sold worldwide, QUIET explores the quiet riches of the introverted half of the population and offers validation, inclusion, and inspiration for introverts (and the extroverts who love them) through a mix of research, storytelling, and memoir.
In BITTERSWEET, Cain employs the same skills and sensibility. What are the powers of a bittersweet, melancholic outlook? she asks. And why has our culture been so blind to its value?
As she describes it, bittersweetness is a tendency toward sorrow and longing, an acute awareness of passing time, and a piercing joy when beholding beauty. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired. Following a trail of centuries-old artistic and wisdom traditions as well as contemporary psychology and management research, Cain reveals how bittersweetness is the key to leading a full and satisfying life. Yet, until now, its power has been hiding in plain sight. As BITTERSWEET shows, our obsession with happiness is not making us happy, healthy, or whole. It’s by embracing our darker emotions—as well as the light—that we discover our deepest meaning and connection, love and joy.
At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, BITTERSWEET brings us together in deep and unexpected ways. Most of all, it shows us how to transform our personal and collective pain into creativity, transcendence, and connection.
Named one of the top ten influencers in the world by LinkedIn, Susan Cain is a renowned speaker and author of the award-winning books Quiet Power, Quiet Journal, and QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Translated into more than forty languages, QUIET has appeared on many best-of lists, spent more than seven years on the New York Times bestseller list, and was named the #1 best book of the year by Fast Company, which also named Cain one of its Most Creative People in Business. Her TED Talk on the power of introverts has been viewed over 40 million times.