Books with author David J. Brooks

#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

#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

#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 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. 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 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."

NO.1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE SOCIAL ANIMALAre you on your first or second mountain? Is life about you - or others? About success - or something deeper? The world tells us that we should pursue our self-interest: career wins, high status, nice things. These are the goals of our first mountain. But at some point in our lives we might find that we're not interested in what other people tell us to want. We want the things that are truly worth wanting.This is the second mountain. What does it mean to look beyond yourself and find a moral cause? To forget about independence and discover dependence - to be utterly enmeshed in a web of warm relationships? What does it mean to value intimacy, devotion, responsibility and commitment above individual freedom? In The Second Mountain David Brooks explores the meaning and possibilities that scaling a second mountain offer us and the four commitments that most commonly move us there: family, vocation, philosophy and community. Inspiring, personal and full of joy, this book will help you discover why you were really put on this earth.

In The Road to Character David Brooks, best-selling author of The Social Animal and New York Times columnist, explains why selflessness leads to greater successYou could say there are two kinds of virtues in the world, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the ones you list on your CV, the skills that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They're what get talked about at your funeral and they are usually the virtues that exist at the core of your being - whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful, what kind of relationships you formed over your lifetime.In this urgent and soul-searching book, David Brooks explores the road to character. We live in a culture that encourages us to think about how to be wealthy and successful, but which leaves many of us inarticulate about how to cultivate the deepest inner life. We know that this deeper life matters, but it becomes subsumed by the day-to-day, and the deepest parts of who we are go unexplored and unstructured. The Road to Character connects us once again to an ancient moral tradition, a tradition that asks us to confront our own weaknesses and grow in response, rather than shallowly focus on our good points. It is a focus David Brooks believes all of us - including himself - need to reconnect with now.Telling the stories of people through history who have exemplified the different activities that contribute to a deeper existence, Brooks uses the diverse lives of individuals such as George Eliot, Dwight Eisenhower and Augustine to explore traits such as self-mastery, dignity, vocation and love. He hopes that through considering their lives it will fire the longing we all have to be better, to find the path to character. 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.

This is the happiest story you will ever read. It's about two people who led wonderfully fulfilling, successful lives. The odd thing was, they weren't born geniuses. They had no extraordinary physical or mental gifts. Nobody would have picked them out at a young age and said they were destined for greatness. How did they do it? In the past thirty years we have learnt more about the human brain than in the previous 3000 - a scientific revolution has occurred. The unconscious mind, it turns out, is most of the mind - the place where the majority of the brain's work gets done, where our most important life decisions are made, where character is formed and the seeds of accomplishment grow. In this illuminating and compelling book, David Brooks weaves a vast array of new research into the lives of two fictional characters, Harold and Erica, following them from infancy to old age. In so doing, he reveals a fundamental new understanding of human nature. Most success stories are explained at the surface level of life. They describe academic ability, hard work and learning the right techniques to get ahead. This story - the story of Harold and Erica - is told one level down, at the level of emotions, intuitions, biases, genetic predispositions and deep inner longings. The result is a new definition of success, highlighting what economists call non-cognitive skills - those hidden qualities that can't be easily counted or measured, but which in real life lead to happiness and fulfilment. The Social Animal is a moving and nuanced intellectual adventure. Impossible to put down, it is an essential book for our time - one that will have a broad social impact and change the way we see ourselves and the world.

**AMAZON TOP 5 BESTSELLER** **INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER** REVISED AND UPDATED - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - This is the happiest story you will ever read. It's about two people who led wonderfully fulfilling, successful lives. The odd thing was, they weren't born geniuses. They had no extraordinary physical or mental gifts. Nobody would have picked them out at a young age and said they were destined for greatness. How did they do it?

At dusk on the saddest and most terrifying day of her life, Haley Stuart, along with her twin brother Nelson, escapes to the home of the Professor, their mysterious godfather. The old man soon learns that the twins are being hunted for the strange and ancient manuscript that Haley brought back from her recent trip to England. Only the professor can decipher the book and explain why the twins are being hunted for its contents. Through the course of one long, sleepless night, the twins and the professor uncover the thousand-year-old secrets of their ancestors in England. They are riveted by the revelations of fourteen particular ancestors whose poignant stories, one at a time, color Haley’s world with a beautiful and desperately-needed depth of self-understanding. And while taking this suspenseful journey back into eleventh-century England, the trials and adventures of her ancient family seem to be presenting Haley with the solution to her own modern-day nightmare.The Well Kept Secret is a fun and compelling frolic through eleventh-century England, a playful historical romp which suddenly leaves its readers face to face with their own foremothers, their own forefathers, and their own well-kept secrets.

This chunky board book series features bold, blackline illustrations of all the creatures and plants you can count at the lake, desert, jungle and ocean! The books count up to 10, and each page shows the numeral as well as the number spelled out. The simple rhyming text encourages children to join in. These books are a great first introduction to numbers as well as to the many plants and animals found in these habitats.

The Well Kept Secret is the story of Haley Stuart. While she and her hilarious twin brother Nelson are vacationing in England, Haley becomes fascinated by a mysterious protrusion at the bottom of an ancient well. Overcome with an unexplainable feeling of nostalgia and belonging, and before Nelson can react, through time and space Haley swan dives down the well and into a compelling adventure that puts into play an enormous medieval treasure, a dangerous stalker, the possibility of her first romance, and what may be a prophecy of unspeakable importance. The ancient book she finds at the bottom of the well begins to reveal to Haley and Nelson, as the one sleepless night of this novel grows long, some very curious and hauntingly familiar characters. And as their mysterious godfather, Professor Flanagan O’Shea, continues to translate the book for them throughout the night, it begins to appear that he may hold some enormously influential position in the United States government. The interplay between the twins and their new medieval friends from a thousand years in the past begin to suggest a possible solution to the murderous threat they are surrounded by as they try to finish the cryptic book by dawn. Haley herself evolves and careens toward a history-altering climax that may save the entire world, in every way. The Well Kept Secret is the first in the Secret Textbook Series.

The Well Kept Secret is the story of Haley Stuart. While she and her hilarious twin brother Nelson are vacationing in England, Haley becomes fascinated by a mysterious protrusion at the bottom of an ancient well. Overcome with an unexplained feeling of nostalgia and belonging, and before Nelson can react, through time and space Haley swan dives down the well and into a compelling adventure that puts into play an enormous medieval treasure, a dangerous stalker, the possibility of her first romance, and what may be a prophecy of unspeakable importance. The ancient book she finds at the bottom of the well begins to reveal to Haley and Nelson, as the one sleepless night of this novel grows long, some very curious and hauntingly familiar characters. And as their mysterious godfather, Professor Flanagan O’Shea, continues to translate the book for them throughout the night, it begins to appear that he may hold some enormously influential position in the United States government. The interplay between the twins and their new medieval friends from a thousand years in the past begin to suggest a possible solution to the murderous threat they are surrounded by as they try to finish the cryptic book by dawn. Haley herself evolves and careens toward a history-altering climax that may save the entire world, in every way. The Well Kept Secret is the first in the Secret Textbook Series.