#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Everybody tells you to live for a cause larger than yourself but
how exactly do you do it? The author of The Road to Character explores what it takes to lead a
meaningful life in a self-centered world.Deeply moving frequently eloquent and extraordinarily
incisive. The Washington PostEvery 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 book 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 shows what can happen when we put commitment-making at the center of our
lives.
