Will I love How to Know a Person?

Nonfiction has to be really good to hold my interest and Brooks accomplishes that with incredibly sharp insights. Have you ever felt like you’re speaking a different language from your relatives or neighbors? He dives into the psychology of defensiveness, explaining how people move from disagreement to moral condemnation. Example: defensive people think “my critics are not just wrong, they're evil" and "angry people are in search of others they can be angry at." It sheds light on how attempts to be rational often backfire and result in the other person feeling “belittled” or mad… a sentiment that perfectly captures… show more.

I love how honest David Brooks is about his own challenges with opening up to people and really leaving them feeling seen and heard. As he reviewed many of his own inadequacies, it allowed me to review the ways in which I might be falling short of my own ideals to leave each person I meet feeling seen and heard.

Since I teach people how to do this in my own workshops, I was constantly able to add David’s insights to my own. 

I teach communication, both speech and writing. I'm a fan of David Brooks books and columns. My liberal friends give me grief about it all the time. But I find him to be thoughtful and thorough in the way he frames his thoughts and research. This book will change how I teach college students, and any other group that I may appear in front of, to connect with each other through better conversations. I have already developed a workshop on the topic inspired by the book, and I spent a week teaching the methods in my classes last fall, and… show more.

Brooks is a terrific storyteller - and these stories are filled with compassion and heart. He does not position himself as an expert and shares his own vulnerability and learnings.

If I could have a crush on a balding conservative with bad teeth, I would have a crush on David Brooks. I may not always agree with his NYT opinions, but I can’t dispute that he is an author of deep curiosity and integrity.

As a journalist, his focus on making the other person feel seen, heard, and understood would seem to be part of his toolkit. But what I most appreciate about Brooks, the storyteller, is his ability to share himself not as an expert in the topic of listening but as a curious and resourceful guide.

The terrain… show more.

In this book, New York Times columnist David Brooks describes research he has uncovered examining how we should think about other people. He admonishes us to avoid the trappings of closed-minded thinking when we evaluate or attempt to “see” other people. For instance, he advises against “objectivism,” based on aggregated statistics that we are today constantly confronted with, in favor of particularism, seeing each individual as a unique person. Corresponding with that advice comes the suggestion to avoid “essentialism”–the belief that groups have essential characteristics–and “the static mindset”–the idea that people do not change.

These are all characteristics of a… show more.