| Description |
1 online resource. |
| Access |
Access restricted to subscribing institutions. |
| Form |
Downloadable applications available for access via iOS 4.0+ devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) and Android 2.1+ devices. |
| Summary |
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "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 "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. 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 "David Brooks's gift'as he might put it in his swift, engaging way'is for making obscure but potent social studies research accessible and even startling. . . . [The Road to Character is] 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."'Pico Iyer, The New York Times Book Review "A powerful, haunting book that works its way beneath your skin."'The Guardian (U.K.) "Elegant and lucid . . . a pitch-perfect clarion call, issued not with preachy hubris but from a deep place of humility, for awakening to the greatest rewards of living . . . The Road to Character is an essential read in its entirety."'Maria Popova, Brain Pickings "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 in The Road to Character."'Washingtonian ("Four Books Washingtonians Should Be Reading This Month") "Engrossing . . . Brooks's poignant and at times quite humorous commentary on the importance of humility and virtue makes for a vital, uplifting read."'Publishers Weekly From the Hardcover edition. |
| Note |
Title from resource description page (Recorded Books, viewed May 18, 2015). |
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GMD: electronic resource. |
| Subject |
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General.
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Social sciences.
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| Added Author |
Recorded Books, LLC.
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| ISBN |
9780679645030 (electronic bk.) |
| Music No. |
EB00498319 Recorded Books |
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