The Road to Character (Thorndike Press Large Print Basic) - Tapa blanda

#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."

David Brooks is the Haley Family Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He joined Harvard in 2002 after spending one year as a research staff member at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Professor Brooks received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. Professor Brooks has received several honors and awards including the ACM Maurice Wilkes Award, NSF CAREER award, IBM Faculty Partnership Award, and DARPA Young Faculty Award. He has received best paper awards at MICRO, HPCA, and ICCD and has had several papers selected for IEEE Micro s Top Picks in Computer Architecture since 2005. His research interests include technology-aware computer design, with an emphasis on powerefficient computer architectures for high-performance and embedded systems.