#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE
YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST • “I wrote this book not sure I could
follow the road to character, but I wanted at least to know what
the road looks like and how other people have trodden it.”—David
Brooks
With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp ins 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.
Responding to what he calls the culture of the Big Me, which
emphasizes external success, Brooks challenges us, and himself,
to rebalance the scales between our “résumé virtues”—achieving
wealth, fame, and status—and our “eulogy virtues,” those that
exist at the core of our being: kindness, bravery, honesty, or
faithfulness, focusing on what kind of relationships we have
formed.
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 rtunity 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 ing 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
“David Brooks—the New York Times columnist and PBS commentator
whose measured calm gives punditry a good name—offers the
building blocks of a meaningful life.”—Washingtonian
“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
“The voice of the book is calm, fair and humane. The highlight
of the material is the quality of the author’s moral and
spiritual judgments.”—The Washington Post
“A powerful, haunting book that works its way beneath your
skin.”—The Guardian (U.K.)
“This learned and engaging book brims with pleasures.”—Newsday
“Original and eye-opening . . . At his best, 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
“There is something affecting in the diligence with which Brooks
seeks a cure for his self-diagnosed shallowness by plumbing the
depths of others.”—Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker