#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
With unequaled insight and brio, New York Times columnist David Brooks
has long explored and explained the way we live. Now Brooks turns to the
building blocks of human flourishing in a multilayered, profoundly
illuminating work grounded in everyday life. This is the story of how
success happens, told through the lives of one composite American
couple, Harold and Erica. Drawing on a wealth of current research from
numerous disciplines, Brooks takes Harold and Erica from infancy to old
age, illustrating a fundamental new understanding of human nature along
the way: The unconscious mind, it turns out, is not a dark, vestigial
place, but a creative one, where most of the brain's work gets done.
This is the realm where character is formed and where our most important
life decisions are made--the natural habitat of The Social Animal.
Brooks reveals the deeply social aspect of our minds and exposes the
bias in modern culture that overemphasizes rationalism, individualism,
and IQ. He demolishes conventional definitions of success and looks
toward a culture based on trust and humility. The Social Animal is a
moving intellectual adventure, a story of achievement and a defense of
progress. It is an essential book for our time--one that will have broad
social impact and will change the way we see ourselves and the world.
