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The Second Mountain

David Brooks

3.74 · Rating details · 5,855 ratings · 916 reviews

In The Second Mountain, David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: 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. In The Second Mountain, Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed liv ...more

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Hardcover, 384 pages

Published April 16th 2019 by Random House (first published 2019)

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Apr 20, 2019 Mehrsa rated it it was amazing

You know what? Nobody can get under my skin like David Brooks. I read all his columns and some of them are just absolutely ridiculous and out of touch. But unlike people like Bret Stephens or other conservatives, I keep coming back to Brooks because once in a while, he can hit it out of the park. This book is the best of Brooks--it's wise and humble and thoughtful. It's sort of a self-help/memoir. I thought some of the parts were weird and I don't agree with him on some things, but I really enjo ...more

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Mar 11, 2019 Gail C. rated it really liked it

THE SECOND MOUNTAIN by David Brooks is a complex book that is part philosophy, part personal disclosure, and part research. It serves as an excellent source to challenge the reader’s thinking about a variety of subjects including religion, marriage, social responsibility and personal growth. It is a book that requires a great deal of thought to absorb what is being said and to time for introspection to ascertain personal reactions. For this reason, I found it easiest to read a section and then THE SECOND MOUNTAIN by David Brooks is a complex book that is part philosophy, part personal disclosure, and part research. It serves as an excellent source to challenge the reader’s thinking about a variety of subjects including religion, marriage, social responsibility and personal growth. It is a book that requires a great deal of thought to absorb what is being said and to time for introspection to ascertain personal reactions. For this reason, I found it easiest to read a section and then put it aside for a few hours or a day to think about what I had read.
The writing is erudite in many spots, and as such is not something one can easily skim, nor would you want to. There are many ideas put forth in terms of what David Brooks himself believes to be true. Whether or not you believe everything that is discussed in the book, it will give you an opportunity to pause and think about some important issues in society today.
Of particular interest to me was the section on becoming a servant leader, one who takes as their focus the improvement of the world around them instead of simply trying to focus on improving their own situation in life. The portions of the book that deal with the hyper-individualism we as a society have gravitated toward over the past sixty or so years. He sites the erosion of old-fashioned neighborhoods as one of the more easily seen examples of this process. He also talks about the perils inherent in becoming more isolated, more divided into groups of like individuals and his argument has a ring of truth to it as society seems to be becoming more intractable in its ability to listen to points of view other than our own.
At times I found myself wondering who was the target audience for the book as it wanders across a vast array of topics. Equal space is given to such disparate subjects as joy, social responsibility, religion, and a host of others. The quotes given in the book provide the reader with a wide range of philosophies on an equally wide range of subjects, almost compelling the reader to pause and think. Is it something with which they agree? Where do they fall philosophically on a variety of topics. Because of this, the reader may find this a longer than average read for them to complete.
While I would recommend this book as something to read for stimulating thought and defining personal philosophies, I would not recommend it as something the reader would pick up for light reading. In places it reads more like a textbook, and there were times when my brain simply would not absorb what was being said. For that reason, I chose not to read this as my “late evening” read when winding down for the night, but saved it for times when I had a fresher brain and enough time to carve out a section to complete before being called to do something else.
This book may be helpful for people who are seeking to define their own values or learn about how others have moved through that process. It is a book that also offers hope for finding “joy” to put in your life in addition to fun and purpose. There is also caution regarding where society is heading if it continues on its current isolationist path. Perhaps the best thing that can be said for this book is that it will encourage you to think, and possibly to act, in ways that may be new to you.
...more

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Sep 11, 2019 Clif Hostetler rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: health-and-selfhelp

Part memoir, part manifesto, and part literature review—this book provides a multifaceted exploration of ways toward achieving a life with purpose and meaning. According to this book the current emphasis in our culture to be hyper-individualistic—focused on the self, achievement, reputation and personal goals—is destructive to the human spirit. Brooks perceives a need to become more “relationalist … where relation, commitment, and the desires of the heart and soul” bring meaning and purpose.

Bro Part memoir, part manifesto, and part literature review—this book provides a multifaceted exploration of ways toward achieving a life with purpose and meaning. According to this book the current emphasis in our culture to be hyper-individualistic—focused on the self, achievement, reputation and personal goals—is destructive to the human spirit. Brooks perceives a need to become more “relationalist … where relation, commitment, and the desires of the heart and soul” bring meaning and purpose.

Brooks, the author, provides the metaphor of "first mountain" and "second mountain" to describe his own life experience of midlife identity crisis—which included a divorce from his first wife—after which he moved on to his life's "second mountain" with changed priorities. He goes on to suggest that the metaphor of "first mountain" and "second mountain" can also be applied to society as a whole. This can be seen in the shift from focus on individualism that began with the counter-cultural movement of the 1960 toward more community oriented priorities.

Numerous quotations from other authors are scattered throughout the book. The frequency of these quotes made me imagine that he and his staff must have scoured hundreds of books for useable quotations, categorized them into differing subjects, and then wrote a narrative around them to fit as required. Brooks is a journalist, so I guess this style of writing is to be expected. The writing is all skillfully done, I'm not complaining. (Some of the names quoted — C.S. Lewis, Alain de Botton, Viktor Frankl, David Foster Wallace, Carl Jung, E.O. Wilson, William James, Abraham Lincoln, Oswald Chambers, Karl Barth, Matthew Arnold, Richard Rohr, the Beatles, Iris Murdoch, Parker Palmer, Elly Hillesum)

The book contains a chapter on marriage filled with much good advice. At first I wondered whether an author who had experienced divorce and remarriage could be the source of advice on what makes a good marriage. A friend of mine retired from a career of mental health work told me recently that all marriage counselors he's known were no longer married to their first spouse. It's perhaps counter intuitive that the best marriage counselors are those who have personally struggled with it in their own life.

It's worth noting that Brooks had the option to seek a better "second mountain" because he had been very successful in his working career that constituted his "first mountain" phase of life. It needs to be acknowledged that being able to make midlife changes is a privilege for those possessing the necessary abilities and resources. Many who live near the ragged edge of survival may not have the option of a "second mountain." The second mountain for some people may be accepting their lot in life and proceeding as cheerfully as possible. ...more

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May 02, 2019 Christine rated it it was ok

I believe that many people will find wisdom in this book, but I am afraid that I found it irritating from page one. It seems to me that the point of the book is that a life of service is satisfying. It is. But Mr. Brooks writes in a high handed, preachy manner as though he were a psychologist, respected philosopher, or clergy, making statements throughout that are to be taken as fact: "The soul is....."and he goes on to define it. The nuns that taught my childhood religious instruction classes d ...more

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May 24, 2019 Keegan Swenson rated it it was ok

Milquetoast divorced middle-aged dude pedals pseudo intellectual garbage. Yawn.

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Apr 27, 2019 MG rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019

While I have given the book 5 stars, I have to say it is not as consistently good as this would indicate. Part 1, in which Brooks explains the "two mountain" metaphor, is worth 5 stars by itself. Combining the wisdom of many teachers (including Richard Rohr, James Hollis, Gerald May, Robert Bellah, Robert Putnam, many others), he describes how everyone builds two mountains, the first, to build identity and discover ourselves but often driven by the ego, and the second, after failure, tragedy, or While I have given the book 5 stars, I have to say it is not as consistently good as this would indicate. Part 1, in which Brooks explains the "two mountain" metaphor, is worth 5 stars by itself. Combining the wisdom of many teachers (including Richard Rohr, James Hollis, Gerald May, Robert Bellah, Robert Putnam, many others), he describes how everyone builds two mountains, the first, to build identity and discover ourselves but often driven by the ego, and the second, after failure, tragedy, or dissatisfaction with the first mountain, we become open to deeper things, deep causes, needs, and are driven by service, compassion, and love. What is especially helpful is Brooks's frank rejection of the siren song of individualism we have been taught as the highest good since childhood. The two mountains, then, offer two contrasting value systems, and our task, both individually and communally, is to move from the first to the second. Wonderful. But this is followed by parts covering "The Four Commitments," though I never quite followed the logic of this transition. Parts 2 and 3, on Vocation and Marriage, are excellent book-report summaries of the best books and advice on these subjects. But he never integrates them with the two-mountain metaphor from Part 1. Then things get interesting again in Part 4, on Philosophy and Faith, where Brooks, over four chapters, tells the story of his long journey to Christian faith and how he is integrating this with his Jewish identity. Part of this is woven together with the story of his divorce and his courtship with his new wife (though not enough detail to qualify as memoir). Overall his reflections on faith, doubt, identity, and apologetics gains him another 5-star section. I only wish more Christians embraced the kind of Christianity Brooks describes. Part 5, on Community, offer excellent observations on what it means to build and sustain communities based on talking to people doing front-line work. The final chapter, what he calls The Relational Manifesto, summarizes the book but in an overly abstract manner that does not make clear what the call-to-action is. So Part 5 gets 4 stars. Brooks is one of our best public intellectuals who many read closely, and so my overall rating reflects the importance of where he points us in Parts 1 and 4. May those sections spur some needed cultural changes. ...more

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Apr 23, 2019 Nathan rated it it was ok

After reading the book one might be left with the impression one has when someone describes how they found God and how that pulled them out of depression, anxiety, lethargy or some other predicament. No one would want to tell somebody to abandon a belief that had such beneficial effects, but a personal experience is just that—personal. Whether it translates from one person to another is highly doubtful.

So while I admire Brooks’ bravery in writing such a counter-cultural work, I have to conclude ...more

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May 09, 2019 Florence Millo rated it it was ok

I really wanted to like this book but it mostly irritated me. I found it preachy and stereotypical. He overthinks and drones on and on. I have to confess that I just couldn’t bring myself to wade through it to the end.

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Sep 14, 2019 Greg Bae rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019, bae-ovation

The smug journalist I remember from the NYT writes a surprisingly vulnerable and personal book about how to live a life of joy. The premise is that people climb their first mountain in life and that looks like career success or a life accomplishment based on what makes them happy. Then something in their life happens to make that happiness go away. So in order to climb the second mountain, people must align to a principled life of the four commitments: vocation, marriage, philosophy and communit ...more

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Apr 24, 2019 Lynne Spreen rated it liked it

Shelves: self-improvement, did-not-finish

The Second Mountain is a book stuffed with anecdotes, quotes, aphorisms, and generalizations. While I don't doubt the sincerity of the author, I couldn't learn from what I read. It was too vague, somewhat directionless. If there are 500 ways to find your path or succeed or find happiness or serve humanity, and you want to write a book about all of it, you'll need to narrow the focus, because otherwise, it's just too much information. I couldn't find threads or draw conclusions. I wasn't compelle ...more

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May 23, 2019 Benjamin rated it really liked it

Terrific book on living a meaningful life. Many of my fellow liberals do a lot of eye-rolling at Brooks' NYT columns, but I've always found him really thoughtful and interesting, even if I disagree with him. He has a unique life story, and he opens up in a very vulnerable, humble way in this book. I enjoyed the many examples of amazing people doing extraordinary things to help others and live full, charitable, and meaningful lives. Brooks advocates connecting with others, building community, and ...more

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Jul 26, 2020 Carol Storm rated it it was ok

Dozens of feel-good stories about real-life people making a difference, and dozens of inspiring quotes from moral heavyweights like Viktor Frankl and C.S. Lewis. But David Brooks comes across as just another scam artist working a racket. The thesis of the book, that "hyper-individualism" is bad and "community" is good comes across as unbelievably shallow and hypocritical. If you've ever read War & Peace, this book is like watching Prince Vassily pretending to be Prince Andrey.

Where's Dolohov wh Dozens of feel-good stories about real-life people making a difference, and dozens of inspiring quotes from moral heavyweights like Viktor Frankl and C.S. Lewis. But David Brooks comes across as just another scam artist working a racket. The thesis of the book, that "hyper-individualism" is bad and "community" is good comes across as unbelievably shallow and hypocritical. If you've ever read War & Peace, this book is like watching Prince Vassily pretending to be Prince Andrey.

Where's Dolohov when you need him?

The author of War and Peace was a Russian aristocrat named Count Leo Tolstoy, and the book started to lose me as soon as I read David Brooks' absolutely jaw-dropping summary of Tolstoy's early life. There is no mention of Tolstoy being a count, no mention that he lived in Czarist Russia, and no mention of a thing called serfdom. Smiling David Brooks assures us that Tolstoy "sowed his wild oats" but makes no effort to understand what that really means. As a young man Tolstoy had the power of life and death over hundreds of human beings. He had extravagant wealth and privileges he did nothing to earn. He could murder, rape, and steal with the blessing of the state. And David Brooks has nothing to say about any of this! He wants you to admire the second half of Tolstoy's life, the repentance, without ever having to acknowledge the ugliness of the society that produced him. In other words, a Russian aristocrat is more honest about the failures of Czarist Russia than a modern American conservative. What does that say about Brooks?

Oh, but there's more. The next hero to get the "Brooks treatment" is rock and roll titan Bruce Springsteen. David Brooks praises the Boss extravagantly for finding his "vocation" and choosing Elvis Presley and the Beatles as role models. Brooks says that people who find their vocations transcend their selfish interests and strengthen the community. What Brooks does not say is that Bruce was rejecting an awful lot when he embraced Elvis. For young Bruce, Elvis was the ultimate hero -- the pope, the king, and the father he never had. But what does that tell us?

Bruce became a rock star because he didn't want to become a Catholic priest. Or work in a factory. Or get killed in Vietnam. Those were his only real options, yet Brooks pointedly ignores all the ways America let him down, along with millions of other working class kids. You don't have to be Dave Marsh to realize that Brooks is a fraud, an opportunist who is only using Springsteen to bolster his own defense of class distinctions and the status quo. He dismisses everything that's personal, angry, and subversive in Bruce's early work, focusing only on the Boss' later success and his hunger for mainstream respectability.

Through gross distortions, lies, and oversimplifications, Brooks advances an argument that our society is in danger because of too much individualism. Too much freedom. He suggests that society cannot survive unless people "form commitments" and "lose themselves" in a cause greater than themselves. It sounds plausible until you actually think about how corrupt society actually is.

Take for example, the well-known case of Huckleberry Finn. Brooks pretends to admire traditional American writers like John Steinbeck, and he has plenty of time for dreary old George Eliot. But he never even mentions Mark Twain's great masterpiece. Why? Huck does everything this book talks about. He moves beyond self-interest when he encounters the runaway slave Jim. Huck forms a commitment to Jim, in fact he loses himself in that commitment, effectively becoming a different person. So what's the problem? The problem is that a slave society can't tolerate unselfishness. Huck's courage, his commitment, his moral growth, doesn't strengthen the society that produced him. Huck's friendship with Jim is dangerous, unacceptable, threatening to both the church and the state. And that makes David Brooks nervous, because he loves the church and state. He's not interested in challenging authority, because he never met an authority figure he didn't like. David Brooks says society can't survive without unselfish behavior. What he doesn't say is that unjust societies also demand unselfish behavior. And that some unjust societies don't deserve to survive.

I wish I had twenty pages to describe everything that's really wrong with this book. There's the long passage about the good old days in Chicago, the old immigrant neighborhoods where everyone knew everyone, and people were happy, "even if they tolerated a lot of racism and anti-Semitism." (Come back, Studs Lonigan, America is *sorry* for what it did to you!) There's the meant-to-be-heartbreaking, but unintentionally funny deathbed scene, where preppy young David Brooks confronts his dying Jewish grandfather and has nothing to say to him. (Our suffering hero wryly puts it down to "constipation of the heart," which sounds like a potty joke from a Kevin Smith movie!)

The funniest moment is when David Brooks tries to argue with a straight face that Christianity and slavery can never coexist, because slavery "devalues the human soul." Or something. The only problem, of course, is that slavery and Christianity did coexist, for about eighteen hundred years. Which explains what a low opinion Mark Twain had of Christianity. And why David Brooks never quotes Mark Twain. ...more

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May 29, 2019 Gayle Fleming rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I have never read a book by David Brooks until now. But i have read his NYTs column and watched his thoughtful conservative commentary on PBS News Hour for years. It was on the PBS News Hour that I heard him being interviewed about this book. His passionate description of the book was what caused me to buy it on the spot.

He actually tackles a lot in this book. But it ultimately boils down to the cult of the individual versus the building of community. The first mountain is the ego driven, indiv ...more

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May 08, 2019 Aligermaa Tse rated it liked it

Shelves: 2019

Started this book around the same time I watched the movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. One could say these two are almost the polar opposites. The Second Mountain focuses on conservative community thinking and interdependence whereas Atlas Shrugged is considered as individualist’s ultimate favorite. It is quite interesting to compare the striking difference in their opinions, both seem to have valid points. Half-way through the book, I was quite convinced this was not my cup of tea ...more

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Jun 20, 2019 Boudewijn rated it really liked it

Shelves: english, downloaded, non-fiction, on-ipod, audio, pi, audible

The rise of individualism has created a range of societal and personal problems, which many people will try to overcome by pursuing material success and hapiness. However, the real road to fulfillment leads to a life of service to other people, which can be practiced through our vocations, marriages, religions and/or the tasks of community building.

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Jun 22, 2019 Patrick rated it liked it

I liked it at first, which I believe was the most powerful part, but then it sort of turned into elitist navel gazing that demands a certain level of privilege to have any context at all. Could probably have been a long form essay rather than a book, tbh. I well appreciate his warning against living a merely aesthetic life, which is tempting in DC, but his discussion of community basically turned into the “invite people over for dinner” ethos. I agree there is a higher calling, a responsibility ...more

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Jun 17, 2019 Chad rated it it was amazing

Rather than hyper-individualism—or its toxic byproduct, tribalism—Brooks calls us to an interdependent life characterized by a commitment to community, creed, morals, and a generally outward-focused life. I can’t begin to describe how many times I was nodding and audibly saying, “Yes!” through this book.

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Jun 12, 2019 Bridget Kiersten added it

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually liked it. The concept is great, but it's ultimately a disappointment for me. I found the marriage section to be the most painful/exhausting and the first section, which focuses on the concept of the second mountain itself, to be the most valuable. I think I thought this book would be less about generalized drivel and more about the actual people in his social weave project and the components that make these people different from the general p ...more

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May 14, 2019 Yvonne S rated it did not like it

Shelves: abandoned

Turned off. Abandoned after the first couple of chapters.

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Jan 06, 2021 chvang rated it did not like it

Shelves: non-fiction, abandoned

Abandoned because it's the pompous wannabe-intellectual drivel of a sanctimonious milquetoast. I could not finish this book and skimmed most of what little I could stomach (though I gotta admit, his style is, as always, easily digestible ((milquetoast!)), but I repeat myself) and I dislike the experience enough to pass judgment on it.

Ostensibly, David Brooks's The Second Mountain "explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a ...more

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Sep 16, 2019 Rachel rated it it was ok

Shelves: book-club-picks

Having read The Social Animal when it was released and followed David Brooks since then, I was excited to read this book. I opened the cover willing to surrender to the newfound wisdom it might reveal and prepared to entertain any idealogical shifts it might imbue. Suffice to say, I feel neither wiser nor ideologically shifted after finishing The Second Mountain.

The book's introduction is brimming with promise, such that it actually exacerbated the disappointment of the remainder of the book. D Having read The Social Animal when it was released and followed David Brooks since then, I was excited to read this book. I opened the cover willing to surrender to the newfound wisdom it might reveal and prepared to entertain any idealogical shifts it might imbue. Suffice to say, I feel neither wiser nor ideologically shifted after finishing The Second Mountain.

The book's introduction is brimming with promise, such that it actually exacerbated the disappointment of the remainder of the book. David Brooks sets out by explaining what he has deemed "The Second Mountain," or a nobler purpose and life's work than the original achievement-based climb that most pursue after college, which he calls "The First Mountain." Ignoring the narrowness of this perspective (e.g. what about those that don't go to college, or those driven to serve without ever summiting a "First Mountain"?), I read on, enticed by the notion that self-improvement was the goal. By eschewing individualism in favor of "relationalism," deeper commitment, and sacrifice, one achieves sincere joy, which he asserts is superior to mere happiness. The introduction and preliminary chapters tee up the rest of the book to function like a menu of options for those seeking to ditch "The First Mountain," inherently promising how-to instructions for thriving in one's chosen pursuit. And although he lays out the areas of life in which to approach a "Second Mountain" commitment (community, relationships, vocation, or spirituality), he ignores the various perspectives beside his own one might approach them from. What's more, despite criticizing societal institutions for failing to educate young people on how to endeavor for their "Second Mountain," he offers nothing more than vaguely connected observations to assist in figuring out the path. After leading the reader to expect a cookbook of fulfilling options--indulging the analogy--he completely omits the recipes and ingredient lists.

Ultimately, this book boils down to 312 pages of borrowed quotes and anecdotes, flimsily supported and often unoriginal conclusions, all fashioned into meandering prose that frequently loses sight of the purported organization of the book. And although he includes occasional personal experiences, they leave the reader puzzled as to their contribution to the development of the book's principle. I can't help but think that, as he writes in the introduction, David Brooks self-indulgently compiled this book to "work out [his] stuff in public," and that he later haphazardly fit into a binding for the sake of monetizing it. Although the idea of a Second Mountain is helpful, that's about the only thing worth gleaning from this book. ...more

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Apr 16, 2019 Verity Payne added it

The usual windy drivel by one of America's biggest moral hypocrites. Naturally, it's full of the sort of self-serving justifications he uses for his own vile amorality in callously abandoning his long-time wife for a younger woman, then chastising her in the pages of the New York Times, no less, for not taking his abuse with "dignity". He even went so far as to imply she was stalking him, smirked about her desperate love for him, bragged about how much pain he was causing her, and, in a staggeri ...more

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Jun 25, 2019 Katybeth Lee rated it it was ok

Loved his oped that summarized the main concept, with which I whole heartedly agree. Hated the full length version (book) which I found preachy and boring.

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Jan 30, 2020 Cheryl rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This book has gems in it, and it is strongest when it quotes other thinkers. I read a few of his articles and his white man-ness is off putting; but I appreciate what he is doing here, and can just hope others of his bent, of his moderate conservatism read this and have epiphanies of joy and then realized the errors of their ways. His personal stories were white man this, white man that also, and not sure who can relate to him, but his intention was to promote his endeavors in community building This book has gems in it, and it is strongest when it quotes other thinkers. I read a few of his articles and his white man-ness is off putting; but I appreciate what he is doing here, and can just hope others of his bent, of his moderate conservatism read this and have epiphanies of joy and then realized the errors of their ways. His personal stories were white man this, white man that also, and not sure who can relate to him, but his intention was to promote his endeavors in community building called Weave, and that is all good. I read an interview by Lisa Miller and he actually says, well I don’t think I am privileged, oh maybe I am. Maybe? Compared to billionaires and millionaires, maybe he is not quite that privileged, but the stupidity of that comment may be the most illuminating aspect of moderates; maybe they think they should be richer and then they can look at themselves as privileged. I can’t even.

Aside from that, here are some gems, but I can’t quite recommend the book unless you are white, in your late 50’s and 60’s and probably male.

There are temporary highs we all get after we win some victory, and then there is also this other kind of permanent joy that animates people who are not obsessed with themselves but have given themselves away.

The season of suffering interrupts the superficial flow of everyday life. They see deeper into themselves and realize that down in the substrate, flowing from all the tender places, there is a fundamental ability to care, a yearning to transcend the self and care for others.

The people who have been made larger by suffering are brave enough to let parts of their old self die. Down in the valley, their motivations changed. They’ve gone from self-centered to other-centered.

But they are living at a fuller amplitude, activating deeper parts of themselves

Joy tends to involve some transcendence of self. It’s when the skin barrier between you and some other person or entity fades away and you feel fused together. Joy is present when mother and baby are gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes, when a hiker is overwhelmed by beauty in the woods and feels at one with nature, when a gaggle of friends are dancing deliriously in unison. Joy often involves self-forgetting. Happiness is what we aim for on the first mountain. Joy is a by-product of living on the second mountain.

writer David Whyte makes the core point. “Joy,” he writes, is the meeting place, of deep intentionality and self-forgetting, the bodily alchemy of what lies inside us in communion with what formally seemed outside, but is now neither, but becomes a living frontier, a voice speaking between us and the world: dance, laughter, affection, skin touching.

“Whenever I plunge into wilderness, my body and the environment move in and out of each other in an intimate pattern of exchange. I wade through water and inhale air filled with the scent of honeysuckle. I’m wrapped in cobwebs and pierced by briars. I swallow gnats drawn to the sweat on my body and feel the rocks on the trail through my boots. Where I “end” and everything else “begins” isn’t always clear. What seems to be “me” doesn’t stop at the fixed boundary of my skin. Such transcendent moments can last only a few moments.” Belden Lane

moral joy. I say this is the highest form of joy in part because this is the kind that even the skeptics can’t explain away. The skeptics could say that all those other kinds of passing joy are just brain chemicals in some weird formation that happened to have kicked in to produce odd sensations. But moral joy has an extra feature. It can become permanent. Some people live joyfully day by day.

When people make generosity part of their daily routine, they refashion who they are. The interesting thing about your personality, your essence, is that it is not more or less permanent like your leg bone. Your essence is changeable, like your mind. Every action you take, every thought you have, changes you, even if just a little, making you a little more elevated or a little more degraded.

Giving has become their nature, and little by little they have made their souls incandescent. There’s always something flowing out of the interiority of our spirit.

“There is joy in self-forgetfulness,” Helen Keller observed. “So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others’ ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness.”

Ruth DeFries calls the “ratchet, hatchet, pivot; ratchet” pattern. People create a moral ecology that helps them solve the problems of their moment. That ecology works, and society ratchets upward. But over time the ecology becomes less relevant to new problems that arise. The old culture grows rigid, and members of a counterculture take a hatchet to it. There’s a period of turmoil and competition as the champions of the different moral orders fight to see which new culture will prevail. At these moments—1848, 1917, 1968, today—it’s easy to get depressed and to feel that society is coming apart at the seams. There are gigantic and often brutal wars of consecration, battles about what way of life is admired most. Eventually society pivots over and settles on a new moral ecology, a new set of standards of right and wrong. Once that’s in place, there is a new ratchet of progress, and the stumble of progress takes another step.

You will notice that our answers take all the difficulties of living in your twenties and make them worse. The graduates are in limbo, and we give them uncertainty. They want to know why they should do this as opposed to that. And we have nothing to say except, Figure it out yourself based on no criteria outside yourself. They are floundering in a formless desert. Not only do we not give them a compass, we take a bucket of sand and throw it all over their heads!

Kierkegaard once summarized the question that these graduates are really asking: “What I really need to be clear about is what am I to do, not about what I must know….It is a question of finding a truth that is truth for me, of finding the idea for which I am willing to live and die….It is for this my soul thirsts, as the deserts of Africa thirst for water.” How is it that on this biggest question of all, we have nothing to say?

The theory behind this life is that you should rack up experiences. But if you live life as a series of serial adventures, you will wander about in the indeterminacy of your own passing feelings and your own changeable heart. Life will be a series of temporary moments, not an accumulating flow of accomplishment.

It turns out that freedom isn’t an ocean you want to spend your life in. Freedom is a river you want to get across so you can plant yourself on the other side—and fully commit to something.

Acedia is the quieting of passion. It is a lack of care. It is living a life that doesn’t arouse your strong passions and therefore instills a sluggishness of the soul, like an oven set on warm. The person living in acedia may have a job and a family, but he is not entirely grabbed by his own life. His heart is over there, but his life is over here.

The English philosopher Simon May said that love is “ontological rootedness.” Love gives you a feeling of being grounded.

In the wilderness, life is stripped of distractions. It is quiet. The topography demands discipline, simplicity, and fierce attention. Solitude in the wilderness makes irrelevant all the people-pleasing habits that have become interwoven into your personality.

The wilderness lives at the pace of what the Greeks called kairos time, which can be slower but is always richer. Synchronous time is moment after moment, but kairos time is qualitative, opportune

“If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life,” Frederick Buechner wrote. “See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

“In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us,” Annie Dillard writes in Teaching a Stone to Talk. “But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other.”

After her first daughter was born, a friend of mine, Catherine Bly Cox, told me, “I found I loved her more than evolution required.”

When you go down inside yourself, you find that there are longings in there that are only completed when you are loving and serving others. “And then,” says the poet Rilke, “the knowledge comes to me that I have space within me for a second, timeless, larger life.”

In Some Do Care, Ann Colby and William Damon quote an anti-poverty activist who expresses this perfectly: “I also know that I am part of a struggle. I am not the struggle. I am not leading the struggle. I am there. And I have been there for a long time, and I’m going to be there for the rest of my life. So I have no unrealistic expectations. Therefore, I am not going to get

For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understand how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. Frankl

At one level we were a bunch of people talking monetary policy, but at a deep, silent level, it was the whole underplay again: the immortal chords of love, bodies living and dying, souls seeking deep gladness and spiritual peace, the whole thing animated by some mysterious life force, the patterns of life formed by and re-creating the eternal stories.

A good society is like a dense jungle. There are vines and intertwining branches. There are enmeshed root systems and connections across the canopy. There are monkeys playing at the treetops, the butterflies darting below. Every creature has a place in the great ecosystem. There is a gorgeous diversity and beauty and vitality. A good person leading a good life is a creature enmeshed in that jungle. A beautiful life is a planted life, attached but dynamic. A good life is a symbiotic life—serving others wholeheartedly and being served wholeheartedly in return. It is daily acts of loving-kindness, gentleness in reproach, forbearance after insult. It is an adventure of mutual care, building, and exploration. (less)

When you see that, you realize joy is not just a feeling, it is a moral outlook. It is a permanent state of thanksgiving and friendship, communion and solidarity. This is not an end to troubles and cares. Life doesn’t offer us utopia. But the self has shrunk back to its proper size. When

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Nov 20, 2019 Laura rated it really liked it

Maybe David Brooks thought he was writing the book to end all books, the comprehensive manual to our times complete with a (really helpful) manifesto at the end. If so, he pretty much succeeded in diagnosing the problem and then offering a comprehensive solution including stellar examples of this solution in practice (something the non fiction books I read rarely offer). But it’s not a perfect book. As another reviewer put it, it sometimes feels like more than one book. Nonetheless, it’s a compa ...more

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May 08, 2020 Kris rated it liked it

Shelves: audiobooks, religion-christianity, recommended-to-me

His basic thesis is we’ve overdone our emphasis on individualism and need to get back to community. But he takes several detours along the way.

I was initially turned off at the beginning, with a section that felt like self-help. I would have ditched it if it’d all been like the beginning. But Brooks eventually makes his main points. Throughout the book he side steps into community service, some autobiography, marriage advice, religion, faith, and just plain randomness. It felt like someone gave ...more

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Sep 30, 2019 Hilary rated it it was ok

Interesting and insightful at times. I finished this book with a few takeaways in regards to both relationships and community. I will note that I found myself skimming certain sections that did not pique my interest as much as others. I think I expected something a bit different and didn't quite hit that mark. ...more

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May 07, 2019 Adam Shields rated it really liked it

I was somewhat reluctant to pick The Second Mountain up. I watched several interviews with him and many those interviews were interesting, but they seemed like they were talking about a couple different books, they range from personal self help book, to ‘an extended graduation speech’, to a version of Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward. Having finished the book, I understand all of those descriptions, but none of them were quite right. And while I am glad I read the book, I do think that is part of t ...more

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Oct 12, 2019 🌍 Marian rated it really liked it

Shelves: lydbok

"I do no longer believe that the cultural and moral structures of our society are fine and all we have to do is fix ourselves individually. Over the past few years, as a result of personal, national and global events I have become radicalized. I now think the rampant individualism of our culture is a catastrophe. The emphasis on self, individual success, self fulfillment, individual freedom, self actualization is a catastrophe. I now think that living a good life requires a much vaster transform ...more

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Jan 23, 2020 Kristen Freiburger rated it liked it

I was disappointed with this one. I’d read great things online and had also saw several of his interviews regarding this title. It seems like he took everyone else’s data/ideas, mashed it together and slapped his name on the front cover. Nothing new here!

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About David Brooks

David Brooks

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David Brooks is a political and cultural commentator. He is currently a columnist for The New York Times and a commentator on PBS NewsHour. He has previously worked for Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, Newsweek, The Atlantic Monthly and National Public Radio.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

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“Joy tends to involve some transcendence of self. It’s when the skin barrier between you and some other person or entity fades away and you feel fused together. Joy is present when mother and baby are gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes, when a hiker is overwhelmed by beauty in the woods and feels at one with nature, when a gaggle of friends are dancing deliriously in unison. Joy often involves self-forgetting.” — 9 likes

“Political freedom is great. But personal, social, and emotional freedom—when it becomes an ultimate end—absolutely sucks. It leads to a random, busy life with no discernible direction, no firm foundation, and in which, as Marx put it, all that’s solid melts to air. It turns out that freedom isn’t an ocean you want to spend your life in. Freedom is a river you want to get across so you can plant yourself on the other side—and fully commit to something.” — 7 likes

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