The Second Mountain: The Joy of Giving Yourself Away

Most of us, over the course of our lives, will make four big commitments- to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Joy comes when we fuse them into one coherent whole, with each of these commitments fortifying and strengthening the others. In The Committed Life, David Brooks looks at people--from Dostoyevsky to Holocaust survivor Etty Hillesum to African educational entrepreneur Fred Swaniker--who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose. In short, this book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives. But it's also a provocative social commentary. We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom and choice, that tells us to be true to ourselves, to march to the beat of our own drummer at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, and binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme degree--and, in the process, we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments. The Social Animal gave us a tale of human nature. The Road to Character traced the history of a great moral tradition--a riveting examination of morality in our time, but with The Committed Life, Brooks turns his mind to what happens when we put commitment-making at the center of life, producing one of Brooks' most personal and revolutionary books yet.

About the Author :
David Brooks is one of the nation's leading writers and commentators. He is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times and appears regularly on PBS NewsHour and Meet the Press. He is the bestselling author of The Road to Character, The Social Animal- The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement; Bobos in Paradise- The New Upper Class and How They Got There; and On Paradise Drive- How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense.

Review :
Praise for David Brooks “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 New York Times Book Review “At his best, Brooks is a normative version of Malcolm Gladwell, culling from a wide array of scientists and thinkers to weave an idea bigger than the sum of its parts.”—USA Today “Brooks’s considerable achievement comes in his ability to elevate the unseen aspects of private experience into a vigorous and challenging conversation about what we all share.”—San Francisco Chronicle