The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement
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Decision Making
After the boom and bust, after the go-go frenzy and the Wall Street meltdown, the Composure Class rose once again to the fore. The people in this group hadn't made their money through hedge-fund wizardry or by some big financial score. They'd earned it by climbing the meritocratic ladder of success. They'd made good grades in school, established solid social connections, joined quality companies, medical practices, and firms. Wealth had just settled down upon them gradually like a gentle snow.
You'd see a paragon of the Composure Class lunching al fresco at some shaded bistro in Aspen or Jackson Hole. He's just back from China and stopping by for a corporate board meeting on his way to a five- hundred-mile bike-a-thon to support the fight against lactose intolerance. He is asexually handsome, with a little less body fat than Leonardo's David, and hair so lush and luxuriously wavy that, if you saw him in L.A., you'd ask, "Who's that handsome guy with George Clooney?" As he crosses his legs you observe that they are immeasurably long and slender. He doesn't really have thighs. Each leg is just one elegant calf on top of another.
His voice is like someone walking in socks on a Persian carpet-so calm and composed, he makes Barack Obama sound like Lenny Bruce. He met his wife at the Clinton Global Initiative. They happened to be wearing the same Doctors Without Borders support bracelets and quickly discovered they had the same yoga instructor and their Fulbright Scholarships came only two years apart. They are a wonderfully matched pair, with the only real tension between them involving their workout routines. For some reason, today's high- prestige men do a lot of running and biking and only work on the muscles in the lower half of their bodies. High-status women, on the other hand, pay ferocious attention to their torsos, biceps, and forearms so they can wear sleeveless dresses all summer and crush rocks into pebbles with their bare hands.
So Mr. Casual Elegance married Ms. Sculpted Beauty in a ceremony officiated by Bill and Melinda Gates, and they produced three wonderful children: Effortless Brilliance, Global Compassion, and Artistically Gifted. Like most upper- and upper-middle-class children, these kids are really good at obscure sports. Centuries ago, members of the educated class discovered that they could no longer compete in football, baseball, and basketball, so they stole lacrosse from the American Indians to give them something to dominate.
Excerpted from The Social Animal by David Brooks. Copyright © 2011 by David Brooks. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
“Man is by nature a social animal,” wrote Aristotle. In The Social Animal, bestselling author David Brooks assesses the building blocks of human flourishing in a multilayered, illuminating work grounded in everyday life. In short, it is the story of how success happens.
Brooks tells his story through the lives of one composite American couple, Harold and Erica: how they grow, push forward, are pulled back, fail and succeed. Distilling a vast array of information into these two vividly realized characters, Brooks illustrates a fundamental new understanding of human nature. Drawing on a wealth of research from numerous disciplines, he takes the couple from infancy to adulthood, revealing the role emotions play in making decisions; showing us how mirror neurons in the brain are wired to mimic the person we’re talking to; exploring the social aspect of our minds and demolishing conventional definitions of success while looking toward a culture based on trust and humility.
The Social Animal is a moving, nuanced intellectual adventure. Impossible to put down, it’s an essential book for our time, one that will have broad social impact and will change the way we see ourselves and the world.
Softcover : 464 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Pub/Div. Random Hous ( March 08, 2011 )
Item #: 13-357133
ISBN: 9781617932496
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25 x 1.12inches
Product Weight: 14.0 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

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