Virtual Event: Gal Beckerman

Harvard Book Store's virtual event series welcomes GAL BECKERMAN—the award-winning author of When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone—for a discussion of his latest book, The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas. He will be joined in conversation by SEWELL CHAN, editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune.

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About The Quiet Before

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.

Praise for The Quiet Before

“The moment for this book is now as we navigate this new era of virtual interactions and wonder how we got here and where we’re headed.” —Susan Orlean, author of On Animals

“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. This book should be read by anyone interested in thinking.” —Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree