Penguin presents the unabridged downloadable audiobook edition of The Road to Character by David Brooks, read by Arthur Morey and David Brooks.

Number one New York Times best seller

In The Road to Character, David Brooks, best-selling author of The Social Animal and New York Times columnist, explains why selflessness leads to greater success.

We all possess two natures. One focuses on external success: wealth, fame, status and a great career. The other aims for internal goodness, driven by a spiritual urge not only to do good but to be good – honest, loving and steadfast. The inner self doesn’t seek happiness superficially defined; it seeks emotional commitments without counting the cost and a deeper moral joy. Individuals and societies thrive when a general balance is struck between these two imperatives, but we live in a culture that encourages us to think about the external side of our nature rather than the inner self. We hanker for praise instead of following our hearts, and we self-promote rather than confront our weaknesses.

In this urgent and eye-opening audiobook, David Brooks asks us to confront the meaning of true fulfilment. A famous columnist for The New York Times and a best-selling author, Brooks found himself living in a shallow mode. For years he remained focused on getting ahead and reaping the rewards for his efforts, placing his career before his character.

Finding himself at a crossroads, Brooks sought out men and women who embodied the moral courage he longed to experience. Citing an array of history’s greatest thinkers and leaders – from St. Augustine and George Eliot to Dwight Eisenhower and Samuel Johnson – he traces how they were able to face their weaknesses and transcend their flaws. Each one of them chose to embrace one simple but counterintuitive truth: in order to fulfil yourself, you must learn how to forget yourself.

An elegant interweaving of politics, spirituality and psychology, The Road to Character proves that it is how we want to be remembered – and not what we put on our CVs – that truly matters.

“I wrote this book not sure I could follow the road to character, but I wanted at least to know what the road looks like and how other people have trodden it.” (David Brooks)

With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that have brought millions of readers to his New York Times column and his previous best sellers, David Brooks has consistently illuminated our daily lives in surprising and original ways. In The Social Animal, he explored the neuroscience of human connection and how we can flourish together. Now, in The Road to Character, he focuses on the deeper values that should inform our lives. Responding to what he calls the culture of the Big Me, which emphasizes external success, Brooks challenges us and himself to rebalance the scales between our “résumé virtues” – achieving wealth, fame, and status – and our “eulogy virtues,” those that exist at the core of our being: kindness, bravery, honesty, faithfulness, and relationships.

Looking to some of the world’s greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders, Brooks explores how, through internal struggle and a sense of their own limitations, they have built strong inner character. Labor activist Frances Perkins understood the need to suppress parts of herself so she could be an instrument in a larger cause. Dwight Eisenhower organized his life not around impulsive self-expression but considered self-restraint. Dorothy Day, a devout Catholic convert and champion of the poor, learned as a young woman the vocabulary of simplicity and surrender. Civil rights pioneers A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin learned reticence and the logic of self-discipline, the need to distrust oneself even while waging a noble crusade.

Blending psychology, politics, spirituality, and confessional, The Road to Character provides an opportunity for us to rethink our priorities and strive to build rich inner lives marked by humility and moral depth.