#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - David Brooks challenges us to
rebalance the scales between the focus on external success--"résumé
virtues"--and our core principles.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST
With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that have brought
millions of readers to his New York Times column and his previous
bestsellers, David Brooks has consistently illuminated our daily lives
in surprising and original ways. In The Social Animal, he explored the
neuroscience of human connection and how we can flourish together. Now,
in The Road to Character, he focuses on the deeper values that should
inform our lives.
Looking to some of the world's greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders,
Brooks explores how, through internal struggle and a sense of their own
limitations, they have built a strong inner character. Labor activist
Frances Perkins understood the need to suppress parts of herself so that
she could be an instrument in a larger cause. Dwight Eisenhower
organized his life not around impulsive self-expression but considered
self-restraint. Dorothy Day, a devout Catholic convert and champion of
the poor, learned as a young woman the vocabulary of simplicity and
surrender. Civil rights pioneers A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin
learned reticence and the logic of self-discipline, the need to distrust
oneself even while waging a noble crusade.
Blending psychology, politics, spirituality, and confessional, The Road
to Character provides an opportunity for us to rethink our priorities,
and strive to build rich inner lives marked by humility and moral depth.
"Joy," David Brooks writes, "is a byproduct experienced by people who
are aiming for something else. But it comes."
Praise for The Road to Character
"A hyper-readable, lucid, often richly detailed human story."--The
New York Times Book Review
"This profound and eloquent book is written with moral urgency and
philosophical elegance."--Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the
Tree and The Noonday Demon
"A powerful, haunting book that works its way beneath your
skin."***--The Guardian
"Original and eye-opening . . . Brooks is a normative version of Malcolm
Gladwell, culling from a wide array of scientists and thinkers to weave
an idea bigger than the sum of its parts."--USA Today
