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    The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life
    Unavailable
    The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life
    Unavailable
    The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

    Written by David Brooks

    Narrated by Arthur Morey

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Everybody tells you to live for a cause larger than yourself, but how exactly do you do it? The best-selling author of The Road to Character explores what it takes to lead a meaningful life in a self-centered world.

    Every so often, you meet people who radiate joy — who seem to know why they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light. Life, for these people, has often followed what we might think of as a two-mountain shape. They get out of school, they start a career, and they begin climbing the mountain they thought they were meant to climb. Their goals on this first mountain are the ones our culture endorses: to be a success, to make your mark, to experience personal happiness. But when they get to the top of that mountain, something happens. They look around and find the view...unsatisfying. They realize: This wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain. And so they embark on a new journey.

    On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They embrace a life of interdependence, not independence. They surrender to a life of commitment.

    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. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty 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 audiobook 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, that tells us to be true to ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme — and in the process we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments. In The Second Mountain, Brooks reveals what can happen when we put commitment-making at the center of our lives.

    Editor's Note

    New release…

    The mythology of American individualism has become overblown and is actively harming our happiness, argues David Brooks. For anyone who’s found personal success yet still feels discontent and disconnected, Brooks outlines how to build loving and sustainable communities.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 16, 2019
    ISBN9781984840776
    Unavailable
    The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life
    Author

    David Brooks

    David Brooks writes a biweekly Op-Ed column for The New York Times and appears regularly on PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and NPR's All Things Considered. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

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    Reviews for The Second Mountain

    4/5

    34 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Excellent- powerful and honest reflection. This is an incredibly strong book from Brooks.
    • 4/5
      amazing book with diverse topics. I LOVED about 70% of it, and it has given me a great amount of inspiration!
    • 5/5
      A bit disjointed (to be expected from a columnist), but excellent.