Before #MeToo, before school board meltdowns, most big movements start small. ‘The Quiet Before’ is about the whisper campaigns.

So I’m reading “The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas,” Gal Beckerman’s excellent new book on the modest roots of massive sea changes, and the butterfly effect-like flutter of a parlor game forms in my head. I make leaps of logic that, though overly tidy, are compelling.

For instance, if Filippo Marinetti, the ringleader of the Futurist activists in early 20th century Italy — a guy who resembled “a silent movie villain about to tie a woman to the railroad tracks” — had not written war-hungry, scorched-earth manifestos, if his ideas had not influenced Benito Mussolini, there might not have been the momentum for fascism in Italy.