From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Quiet comes Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, revealing the power of a bittersweet, melancholic outlook on life and why we’ve been so blind to its value.

As Cain describes it, bittersweetness is a tendency toward 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.

With Quiet, 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 the surprising lessons these states of mind teach us about creativity, compassion, leadership, spirituality, mortality, and love.

At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that can help us transcend our personal and collective pain and bring us together in deep and unexpected ways. In conversation with Daniel Pink, the author of several bestselling books about business, work, and behavior including When, Drive, and The Power of Regret.