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Also by Susan Cain:

Bittersweet, April 2022
Audio / audiobook
Quiet, February 2012
Hardcover / e-Book

BITTERSWEET
By: Susan Cain

How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

Random House Audio Publishing Group
April 2022
On Sale: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 0176194606
EAN: 2940176194609
Audio / audiobook
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Self-Help Health

ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—Oprah Daily, BookPage

Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of long­ing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute aware­ness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired.  

If you’ve ever wondered why you like sad music . . . 

If you find comfort or inspiration in a rainy day . . . 

If you react intensely to music, art, nature, and beauty . . . 

Then you probably identify with the bitter­sweet state of mind.

With Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an un­tapped power hidden in plain sight. Now she em­ploys the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and how embracing the bittersweetness at the heart of life is the true path to creativity, con­nection, and transcendence.

Cain shows how a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain. If we don’t acknowledge our own heartache, she says, we can end up inflicting it on others via abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that all humans know—or will know—loss and suffering, we can turn toward one another.  

At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together in deep and unexpected ways.