The Road to Character
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 "resume 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.
Stats for nerds
9recommend
15mentions
15people
2015–2025years
60% recommend33% neutral7% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The road to character.
It's a great reality check, poking into human nature, morality, suffering, all with real life examples and littlz tolerance for bullshit without delusion of grandeur.
- If you like Rilke, you'd also really like James Hollis' The Middle Passage (1993). As for as books from the past decade go David Brooks' The Road to Character was pretty good. His follow-up The Second Mountain would have been better if he didn't recycle so much from the previous work. Sam Harris' Waking Up was pretty eye opening as Harris is a very lucid thinker.
- I can say I've got through something similar.
A book that made me very introspective was David Brook's The Road To Character . It made me ask my self a lot of questions which I have documented here https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/packages/55/david-brooks-humi...
Another book was Paul Kalanathi's When Breath Becomes Air I also copied some quotes, questions, and answers here https://www.deepthoughtapp.com/packages/135/paul-kalanithis-...
I'd recommend reading biographies because they can help you give perspective about how a person leads their life. The ones I found thoroughly fun was Trevor Noah's Born a Crime, Phil Knight's Shoe Dog.
- I haven't read much else he's written, but I did enjoy The Road to Character... should I now be suspicious of the claims he makes about the people he described?
- I think this is pretty much the thesis statement of "The Road to Character". Another interesting insight I am picking up from that book is that the best leaders are really the ones who know how to identify and pick the "Best Leaders". While those who are humble and reserved do a great job of actually doing the work of leadership, the absolute best leaders don't actually have those same virtues, but they recognize the quality and enable humble people to do good work.
- Deep Work - Cal Newport (highly recommended)
A Mind for Numbers - Barbara Oakley
The Road to Character - David Brooks
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