The Quiet Before
On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas
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…
Gal Beckerman is the senior editor for books at The Atlantic. Formerly an editor at The New York Times Book Review, he is the author of the widely acclaimed When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone, which won the National Jewish Book Award and the Sami Rohr Prize and was named a best book of the year by The New Yorker and The Washington Post. He has a PhD in media studies from Columbia University and writes for many publications, including The New Republic and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their two daughters.
