The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks

The Social Animal is a fascinating non-fiction book. It is about how we make decisions about ourselves, others, and the choices we encounter. It is how we achieve success and how we define success. It presents a lot of research about how quickly we make judgments and how resistant we are to changing our judgments. It talks about how much we let our subconscious make decisions for us and how some people overrule their subconscious. He talks about what character is, how it can be molded and changed. Most of this isn’t just stuff that he believes. He cites research to back it up. Fascinating.

If you love Pop Psychology and Sociology (as I do!!), then you’ll love this book. It has proven to be very controversial among the so called experts so Mr. Brooks must be on to something. I am not qualified to pass judgement on his conclusions but I found him to be very insightful. I am not into building a personal library but I may keep this one. I will loan it out though, or you can to the library. If you buy, get a coupon.

I rate this this book 4.5 stars out of 5. I don’t rate too many books that high. Get it, read it, tell us what you think.

4 thoughts on “The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks

  1. Melissa

    This one has been on my “want to read” list for awhile. Glad to know this is a good one – especially knowing that we have similar tastes in books!

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