“The Social Animal” by David Brooks

This has been the most enjoyable reading experience I have had in a very long time. David Brooks magically maps out almost all aspects of human life and weaves a story out of it which is extremely readable – all supplemented with up-to-date research.

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In less than 500 pages are two lives layed out in all their complexity and to what they all connect.

 Harold, born to two wonderful parents, whose love life is underlined with psychological findings all the way to their bodily cues, is brought up in the American middle class. He enjoys a wonderful childhood and establishes himself as the center of the popular kids in high-school. He goes on to college and is tightly locked into a circle of close friends.

Erica is a heir to a gene pool of Asian and Latino immigrants and grows up in unstable circumstances. Her mom being at times unable to work and she having to take care of her, her dad being there for her in an on/off manner. But finally she manages to get into a charter school and to Denver. After college she joins a consulting firm, which she soon dumps to create her own. Her first employee is … Harold.

They build up the company together but it fails some years later. But eventually all she becomes the CEO of a large telecommunications company and Harold becomes an author and historian. When they manage the campaign of the presidential candidate they even gain access to the Davos-circle, where the rich and powerful reside.

After fulfilled and meaningful lives they settle down in Aspen in old age, where they enjoy to look back at successful and meaningful lives.

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What I find so admirable about this book is that it covers practically all aspects of human life and underlies it with up to date psychological research. Also it seems to me that David Brooks is very wise and considerate in his writing which combinedly makes for as coherent and readable account of human life as ever there could be. Given that in large parts, for us humans, our existence is defined through and is made up of a human life, this books is as wholesome a story of existence (at least in North-America at the break of this century) as ever there could be.

As an (aspiring) writer I have adopted the imperative to “write the book you want to read”. Well over the past months there have been few books that I have so thoroughly enjoyed as this one and where I still felt that I was doing something for my education. In short, if I had wished to have written one book of all those that I have read so far, it would have been this one.