Back to Me - The Global Art of Talking Without Listening

Back to Me: The Global Art of Talking Without Listening is a sharp, funny, and globally informed exploration of how modern conversation has drifted into chaos. Quentin Drummond Anderson examines why, in a world louder than ever, silence has become the rarest sound — and listening an endangered skill. Drawing on a lifetime of cross-cultural experience, he takes readers from Tokyo to London, New York to Riyadh, revealing how every society has its own choreography of speech, interruption, and performance.

In Britain, conversation is a “polite ambush,” wrapped in apologies. Americans interrupt with enthusiasm, mistaking passion for empathy. Italians talk all at once, turning dialogue into an affectionate opera. In France, interruption is a duel; in the Nordic nations, silence is authority. Across Asia and the Middle East, measured speech and generous dialogue show how listening can still be an art.

Anderson dissects the conversational species of our age — from Interruptus Maximus to the Armchair Philosopher, from the Monologue Society to the Name Dropper — with the precision of a zoologist and the wit of a novelist. His analysis exposes not just how we speak, but what our habits reveal about insecurity, identity, and the universal hunger to be heard.

Yet Back to Me is ultimately hopeful. Anderson argues that beneath the noise lies the possibility of civility, humility, and curiosity — if we choose to reclaim them. “When everyone shouts,” he writes, “wisdom whispers.”

Insightful, cosmopolitan, and often laugh-out-loud funny, Back to Me is a timely guide to understanding how we lost the ability to listen — and how we might find it again.

📘 Available for order globally on Amazon in Kindle, hardcover, and paperback. Audiobook exclusively on Google Play Books..

© 2025 Quentin Drummond Anderson (Audiobook): 9798260821435

Release date

Audiobook: 27 November 2025