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ivy_thomas 's review for:
The Road to Character
by David Brooks
In the beginning, I was prepared to write it off as a "your generations sucks" nagging narrative, but there is something deeper and interesting at hand. Brooks has a talent for making the stories of the people he portrays leap off the page and materialize as living and breathing human beings. I saw some of my own predispositions and struggles in these figures. He also had an interesting way of asserting arguments amidst the lives he wrote about, with each of those lives bringing in a different complex layer to his argument. The best quality of the book is that is synthesizes many different philosophical and moral ideas in a compelling manner, inspiring the reader to consider pursuing this road of character. Ultimately, I found his argument compelling: One has to actively cultivate character by unflinchingly looking at the worst parts of ourselves and undergoing a journey to purge our vices and strengthen our virtues. One word of warning for the casual reader is that this is a profoundly religious book. If you are steeped in the Christian tradition, this will be a familiar and welcome book, but if you are not, the frequent references to religion, God, and the general Christian ethos might be irksome.