The Road to Character The Road to Character

The Road to Character

The Humble Journey to an Excellent Life

    • 4.0 • 265 Ratings
    • $13.99

Publisher Description

#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

GENRE
Nonfiction
RELEASED
2015
April 14
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
320
Pages
PUBLISHER
Random House Publishing Group
SELLER
Penguin Random House LLC
SIZE
2
MB

Customer Reviews

Disappointed with ,

The Road to Character

A comprehensive treatment of an important characteristics.

Aed343 ,

Not as expected

The intro is great but the rest of the book was not as I expected. I thought it was going to be more of a self help book or a look inside the author's mind. Instead, it is a compilation of short biographies. This book is better suited in the biographies section.

placcp ,

Brooks is one of the best

Outstanding and thought provoking

Ideas to Save Your Life Ideas to Save Your Life
2021
Delphi Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft (Illustrated) Delphi Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft (Illustrated)
2016
Stoic Wisdom Stoic Wisdom
2021
The Unbroken Thread The Unbroken Thread
2021
Letters from a Stoic Letters from a Stoic
2004
Six Questions of Socrates: A Modern-Day Journey of Discovery through World Philosophy Six Questions of Socrates: A Modern-Day Journey of Discovery through World Philosophy
2011
The Social Animal The Social Animal
2011
The Second Mountain The Second Mountain
2019
How to Know a Person How to Know a Person
2023
Bobos in Paradise Bobos in Paradise
2010
On Paradise Drive On Paradise Drive
2004
How to Build a Prenatal Lab for the Real World How to Build a Prenatal Lab for the Real World
2024
Courage Is Calling Courage Is Calling
2021
Lives of the Stoics Lives of the Stoics
2020
60 Seconds and You're Hired!: Revised Edition 60 Seconds and You're Hired!: Revised Edition
2016
Stillness Is the Key Stillness Is the Key
2019
Noise Noise
2021
Skin in the Game Skin in the Game
2018