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Title details for The Social Animal by David Brooks - Available

The Social Animal

A Story of How Success Happens

by David Brooks
ebook
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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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 5, 2011

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781780720005

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781780720005
      • File size: 569 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 30, 2011
      Brooks delivers alook at the impact of social influence on the individual that will help many reconsider what shapes them. He structures this work of the latest research in psychology and sociology (with emphasis on social psychology) in the tradition of Rousseau's Emile, creating two fictional characters whose choices and decisions throughout their lives are contextualized by a myriad of social, economic, and cultural forces. With a friendly projection, Arthur Morey narrates with a strong, calm, and deliberate tone, making sure each piece of this complex puzzle is understood, and Brooks's prose certainly invites this approach. With well-chosen emphasis and pauses, Morey engages listeners with a sincere tone that comes close to condescension, but never actually crosses over. Both Morey and Brooks are enthusiastic, but shy away from being preachy. A Random hardcover.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 31, 2011
      New York Times columnist Brooks (Bobos in Paradise) raids Malcolm Gladwell's pop psychology turf in a wobbly treatise on brain science, human nature, and public policy. Essentially a satirical novel interleaved with disquisitions on mirror neurons and behavioral economics, the narrative chronicles the life cycle of a fictional couple—Harold, a historian working at a think tank, and Erica, a Chinese-Chicana cable-TV executive—as a case study of the nonrational roots of social behaviors, from mating and shopping to voting. Their story lets Brooks mock the affluent and trendy while advancing soft neoconservative themes: that genetically ingrained emotions and biases trump reason; that social problems require cultural remedies (charter schools, not welfare payments); that the class divide is about intelligence, deportment, and taste, not money or power. Brooks is an engaging guide to the "cognitive revolution" in psychology, but what he shows us amounts mainly to restating platitudes. (Women like men with money, we learn, while men like women with breasts.) His attempt to inflate recent research on neural mechanisms into a grand worldview yields little except buzz concepts—"society is a layering of networks"—no more persuasive than the rationalist dogmas he derides.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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