The Road to Character

Description

The No. 1 New York Times bestseller on the secret to leading a good life We live in a Big Me culture: universities and businesses alike reward goal-oriented superstars and those who self-promote are most likely to thrive. But what does this say about us? David Brooks argues that our hunger for wealth and status is eroding our ability to create meaningful inner lives. To show us how to live better, he looks at people whose sense of humility was fundamental to their success. What they all understood was a simple but counterintuitive truth: in order to fulfil yourself, you must learn how to forget yourself.

David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times and frequent broadcaster. His previous books include the bestsellers The Social Animal and Bobos in Paradise. His New York Times columns reach over 800,000 readers across the globe.

Profound and eloquent ... written with moral urgency and philosophical elegance -- Andrew Solomon, author of 'Far From the Tree' A powerful, haunting book that works its way beneath your skin ... worth logging off Facebook to read it -- Oliver Burkeman Guardian Everyone concerned about the good life should read this book -- Tim Montgomerie The Times A hyper-readable, lucid, often richly detailed human story ... In the age of the selfie, Brooks wishes to exhort us back to a semiclassical sense of self-restraint, self-erasure and self-suspicion New York Times Book Review [Brooks] emerges as a countercultural leader ... The literary achievement of The Road to Character is inseparable from the virtues of its author ... The highlight of the material is the quality of the author's moral and spiritual judgments -- Michael Gerson Washington Post