“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.”
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