The Social Animal

Finally!

Finally someone, if not laying out the solution, has written something about the real causes of the unequal access to opportunity in our world. And that it can't all be fixed by throwing money at any one thing. He follows two individuals from polar opposite backgrounds - who eventually join to become a couple - through the course of their lives. One person is from an educated background of privilege, the other is from a multicultural environment of poverty, dislocation and stress. What they both have in common is an intuitive grasp of how to make the decisions which will bring the best outcomes. Each person in tuned in to his/her unconscious (or subconscious?) layer of perception, which has nothing to do with their conscious layers of rational thought - but the two combine to bring success in school, good grades, success in a career, money, accolades. etc. Brooks' thesis is that we have two layers operating in our minds/brains/souls. One is conscious, or rational, the other is unconscious, or emotional. And we are of course mostly unaware of this unconscious layer and how it informs our life choices.

Both these characters lead very successful lives, though as Brooks points out, they are not on the top of any scale of IQ numbers, or list of SAT scores, nor are they "connected" through family in any way. While attractive and pleasing to look at, neither one is "drop dead gorgeous". But their lives are full and rich and successful by any definition of the term. However they listen to their inner guidance, intuitively, mostly unawares, and it is their cues from this subconscious layer which create their best decisions throughout their lives.

I wish he had let us know just how to get this "unconscious" layer to work for us in a positive way all the time!

Great book, great reading, could not put it down. The book is so rich in insight, I am reading it again.

58 of 66 people found this review helpful

So Insightful I Was Moved To Tears

Never in my adult life have I listened (or read) a book that so beautifully blended prose and allegory with hard science and self-help. The synthesis is a unified theory of morality, motivation, love, character, politics, and meaning. I am not normally a person who can easily be moved to tears by a book, much less one that is really centered on discussions of Maslow's hierarchy of needs or countless studies of firing amygdala's.

Brooks has long been a favorite NYT Columnist, sharing a coherent and consistent world view without being either doctrinaire or an us-versus-them blowhard like Limbaugh on the right or Krugman on the left. This book follows two fictional characters, Harold and Erica, from birth, childhood, careers, marriage, retirement, and death, revealing how social connection (or lack thereof) drives most humanistic endeavors. This insight would not be so groundbreaking, but revealing the how and the why through the prism of the beautiful Harold and Erica love story is where Brooks excels.

As if all of this were not enough, the humor propels this book from being just "Really Good" to being "One for the Ages". A sampling:

"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 Michelangelo’s David. 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 so calm and measured that he makes Barack Obama sound like Sam Kinison. He met his wife at the Clinton Global Initiative, where they happened to be wearing the same Doctors Without Borders support bracelets"


Buy this book! You will be immeasurably enriched.

13 of 15 people found this review helpful

A Mess

David Brooks starts out with a promising idea and, in the second half, turns his idea into a complete hodgepodge.

Mr. Brooks is an astute columnist and a keen observer of the history of social theory. He is definitely not a novelist. His characters, particularly in the later chapters, fall apart into cardboard cut-outs and soap cast members.

I almost gave up but stuck it out to the bitter end.

I would not recommend this book.

16 of 22 people found this review helpful

A life story

What made the experience of listening to The Social Animal the most enjoyable?

It follows the protagonist from birth to death, presenting many examples of our pains and joys throughout, and explains many psychological theories in easy to understand ways.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Illustrative narrative of social neuroscience

If you could sum up The Social Animal in three words, what would they be?

Illustrative, synopsis, narrative

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

The book does a nice job of portraying a cohesive image of the current understanding of social neuroscience

Any additional comments?

The book takes some narrative liberties in interpreting research. Much if the evidence and research in this field is isolated and incomplete. The author takes a few unjustified leaps in his implied understanding.

NOTE: cognitive and social neuroscience is a very young field, we do not have as complete or concrete understanding as the author implies.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Will Turn Your World Upside Down

David Brooks in The Social Animal provides the reader with a basic understanding of evolutionary psychology and its interpretation of how we develop character, are affected by our emotions, and how we interact with one another. Throughout the book, he applies insights from neuroscience to our (evolutionary) psychological tendencies. From my perspective, the book’s most valuable chapters come near the end when Brooks applies what he has presented to moral development and ethical reasoning. There is a lot here to admire and a lot to trouble anyone interested in actual and prospective human behavior. Shifting from Freudian psychology to a Darwinian/evolutionary psychology will disturb me for days. Applying that thinking to the human condition and personal living is personally revolutionary. The world will change again as this perspective takes hold. The reading of Author Morey is excellent.

5 of 7 people found this review helpful

self congratulatory and overwrought

The novel is a jumble of the distillation of science we get in news today (which is of no surprise, since Brooks is a contributer to this dumbing down and scintillation of research as a columnist). He makes some interesting observations, but they are all idease plagiarized by other pop-culture writers of our time. The beginning of the novel was fairly good

The characters served no point in creating interest in the subject matter other than as a false pretext to lay out Brooks' synopses of studies he has cobbled together from a multitude of sources from elementary textbook researchers to pop-cultural researchers. It is obvious he did his work for this book by reading popular news articles on science, without real criticism of it.
In addition, he refutes notions of systematic racism and sexism in our country and attributes it entirely to failures of cultures to promote work ethic, with sparse obscure studies, none of which come to the conclusions he does.
The addition of characters to the story is ridiculous at best and offensive at worst, with his anecdotal suggestion for how minorities in poor school systems can climb out of poverty is through violence with school administrators in order to get into charter schools.

I gave the audiobook 2 stars because the narrator was really quite good.

12 of 18 people found this review helpful

What was this book about again?

This book was just interesting enough to keep me from turning it off and just pointless enough to allow me to remember anything significant about it. What the author was trying to do here was a mystery to me.

7 of 11 people found this review helpful

Warning - proselytizer

Another lunatic trying to push a hidden agenda. I got 6 minutes and 45 seconds into the book and had to discontinue after two "belief in God" promotions. Lesson learned. Research the author more carefully before purchasing a book even if it has high rating.

20 of 33 people found this review helpful

David Brooks?

I have a lot of respect for David Brooks. Rarely do I agree with him, but I appreciate his civil discourse and intelligent reasoning. So, this book was a real disappointment! It is very repetitive and can't really make up its mind what it wants to be - fiction, psychotherapy, social commentary? It's a mixed-up mess, in short. Sorry, David, not recommended.

3 of 5 people found this review helpful