David Brooksâ??s next book, The Road to Character, publishes tomorrow, the same days as my own How Dante Can Save Your Life. Iâ??ve been reading Davidâ??s book (I received an advance copy) with amazement at how he and I have been walking parallel paths in life, and how that shows up in the books we have written â?? which have a stunning amount of overlap.
The Brooks book is really, really good. One rule Iâ??ve observed in my house is that the better a book is, the more I find myself subjecting my poor wife to hearing me read passages aloud to her. â??Listen to this,â? is probably the most frightening three words she ever hears from me. Sadly for her, there are a lot of â??listen to thisâ? moments in The Road to Character, which is a practical, compulsively readable meditation on the virtues as embodied in the lives of real people. If it sounds Nobleâ?¢, in an eat-your-broccoli sense, itâ??s not. Iâ??m allergic to books like that, but this one is like having a long conversation with a friend as you sit by the fire in leather armchairs, and he tells you stories about people you wish you knew, and even that you wish you were.
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