Two imaginary lives, many important points

Brooks, David. The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement. New York: Random House, 2011.

If you only know David Brooks as one of the resident arguers on the PBS NewsHour Weekly Political Wrap, as I did, you might be pleasantly surprised by this wide-ranging, thoughtful, and frequently entertaining book about life, the brain, and what success really means. Near the end, for example, there's a nuanced discussion of how people adapt their views to a selected political party and how compromise is impossible when politics becomes a contest among identity groups, more like religion than opinion. This is an important concept today. Plus, the book is well written, with enough irreverence to lighten up what could be hefty.

If, however, you happen to have recently read some popular-science books on the brain such as Incognito, Moonwalking with Einstein, and How We Decide, and Outliers (as I have), you might find the material a little less fresh. There are only so many times in a year that I need to see the examples of practice leading to skill, chicken sexing, the rigged card decks that your brain figures out before you do, the marshmallow test, artificial rivalries at summer camp, and optical illusions (which are presented in an amusingly mocking passage on neuromapping, so I suppose that's a little different). What's new about this book is how the material is presented. Brooks uses the lives of two characters, Harold and Erica, whose superior social skills and drive gave them the success that raw IQ or upbringing might not have, to frame a broad discussion of the brain, culture, and social ties. The two characters make the topic especially approachable. It feels weird to see such finely developed characters in a non-fiction book, but it works.

My main complaint (since it's not Brooks's fault that I had read those other books) is that that the breadth of the stories means that the book seems to lack focus. Early in the story, Harold takes weeks to research and frame a term paper, sleeping on ideas and distilling thoughts until he has a narrow thesis. The Social Animal could have similarly sacrificed a bit of its breadth for a tighter point of view. Of course, this is a level of care that I don't apply to these blog posts (even if I should), so I can't whine too much.

Rating: **1/2