#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Everybody tells you to live for a cause larger than yourself, but how exactly do you do it? The author of The Road to Character explores what it takes to lead a meaningful life in a self-centered world. “Deeply moving, frequently eloquent and extraordinarily incisive.”—The Washington Post Every so often, you meet people who radiate joy—who seem to know why they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light. Life, for these people, has often followed what we might think of as a two-mountain shape. They get out of school, they start a career, and they begin climbing the mountain they thought they were meant to climb. Their goals on this first mountain are the ones our culture endorses: to be a success, to make your mark, to experience personal happiness. But when they get to the top of that mountain, something happens. They look around and find the view . . . unsatisfying. They realize: This wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain. And so they embark on a new journey. On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They embrace a life of interdependence, not independence. They surrender to a life of commitment. In The Second Mountain, David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity and beauty of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose. In short, this book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives. But it’s also a provocative social commentary. We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom, that tells us to be true to ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme—and in the process we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments. In The Second Mountain, Brooks shows what can happen when we put commitment-making at the center of our lives.

What happens when you’ve done all you know how to do, the paved paths end, and you still feel like you’re missing something? The Second Half of the Mountain offers a practical and magical approach to recognizing and working with the deeper and often-confusing inner processes that happen after awakening. In this guidebook, McCall Erickson combines bits of personal story with the timeless building blocks of alchemy to outline the journey for the awakened traveler through the dark nights of the soul and beyond, not as “the way,” but as a guide to help you make your own way where it sometimes feels there is no way.

“Shakil is a rare jewel in the work of what it means to heal, repair, and take responsibility... This book is required reading for anyone interested in building a loving, just and diverse world.” —Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, Zen teacher & author of Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up Racial justice without shame or blame. Road-tested tools to start making a difference today. In Deep Diversity, award-winning racial justice educator Shakil Choudhury explores the emotionally loaded topic of racism using a compassionate, scientific approach that everyone can understand—whether you are Black, Indigenous, a person of color (BIPOC), or white. With clear language and engaging stories that will appeal to readers of Brené Brown and Malcom Gladwell, Choudhury explains how and why well-intentioned people can perpetuate systems of oppression, often unconsciously. Using a trauma-informed approach that removes shame or blame, he offers us the tools to recognize, take authentic responsibility, and enact deep change. In easy-to-absorb chapters, Choudhury interweaves research into the brain and studies on human behavior with hard-won lessons from his career of helping organizations and CEOs create more inclusive environments. He models vulnerability and mistake-making, sharing examples of his own bias-missteps so readers are encouraged into their own racial justice journey without judgment. Readers will come away from the book with practical tools and an understanding of: How to becomes a systems thinker by developing “racial pattern recognition” skills in order to challenge racism and other forms of systemic discrimination when we encounter them, while minimizing the tendency to shame or blame ourselves or others. How to recognize when the unconscious influence of bias, identity, emotions, or power contradict our beliefs about equality, and how to realign our thoughts/words/actions. How to break the racial “prejudice habits” we have all been socialized into since birth, using research-based strategies. How the rise in authoritarianism and income inequality (among other factors) contribute to a rise in hate crimes and racial discrimination, and what to do about it. Traditional approaches to anti-racism overly rely on analyzing history to explain systemic discrimination, which only tells us a part of the story. What’s missing, Choudhury argues, is to understand why humans do what we do, the evolutionary impulses underlying our group-ish nature and our struggles with power, bias, and social dominance. This is why psychology and neuroscience perspectives are critical to integrate into anti-racist work, as is practicing compassion for ourselves and for others. Deep Diversity is a unique, evidence-based approach to racial justice that seeks to overcome feelings of shame that so often block our progress and prevent deep change at individual and systemic levels. Deep Diversity meets you where you’re at, regardless of your identity, class, ability, or belief system, and invites you to come along on a journey of self-discovery, social awareness, and lifelong learning. It’s only just begun. “Choudhury draws on heart-touching stories, research on the brain, and hard-won lessons from real-world interventions to offer useful strategies to know ourselves, and others better.”—New York Times-bestselling author of Buddha’s Brain, Rick Hanson

In A Couple After God's Own Heart Interactive Workbook, Jim and Elizabeth George build on the content of their book, A Couple After God's Own Heart, to create a companion guide that leads husbands and wives through a fascinating study on God's plan for marriage. Through a unique blend of Bible study material, questions for thought, and "What Can I Do Today?" applications, couples will grow a closer and deeper union as they... learn from the successes and failures of key couples in the Bible discover the essentials to a better marriage participate in discussions designed to stimulate communication with each other set and apply goals that help husbands and wives be all God designed them to be determine how to make the best of the strengths and weaknesses in their relationship This friendly and practical study offers life lessons from a variety of well-known couples in Scripture, and will equip spouses to experience more and more of the incredible bliss only God can bring into a marriage.

Written by a young human rights worker, "Silence on the Mountain" is a virtuoso work of reporting and a masterfully plotted narrative tracing the history of Guatemala's 36-year internal war, a conflict that claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people.

The author of the acclaimed bestseller Bobos in Paradise, which hilariously described the upscale American culture, takes a witty look at how being American shapes us, and how America's suburban civilization will shape the world's future. Take a look at Americans in their natural habitat. You see suburban guys at Home Depot doing that special manly, waddling walk that American men do in the presence of large amounts of lumber; super-efficient ubermoms who chair school auctions, organize the PTA, and weigh less than their children; workaholic corporate types boarding airplanes while talking on their cell phones in a sort of panic because they know that when the door closes they have to turn their precious phone off and it will be like somebody stepped on their trachea. Looking at all this, you might come to the conclusion that we Americans are not the most profound people on earth. Indeed, there are millions around the world who regard us as the great bimbos of the globe: hardworking and fun, but also materialistic and spiritually shallow. They've got a point. As you drive through the sprawling suburbs or eat in the suburban chain restaurants (which if they merged would be called Chili's Olive Garden Hard Rock Outback Cantina), questions do occur. Are we really as shallow as we look? Is there anything that unites us across the divides of politics, race, class, and geography? What does it mean to be American? Well, mentality matters, and sometimes mentality is all that matters. As diverse as we are, as complacent as we sometimes seem, Americans are united by a common mentality, which we have inherited from our ancestors and pass on, sometimes unreflectingly, to our kids. We are united by future-mindedness. We see the present from the vantage point of the future. We are tantalized, at every second of every day, by the awareness of grand possibilities ahead of us, by the bounty we can realize just over the next ridge. This mentality leads us to work feverishly hard, move more than any other people on earth, switch jobs, switch religions. It makes us anxious and optimistic, manic and discombobulating. Even in the superficiality of modern suburban life, there is some deeper impulse still throbbing in the heart of average Americans. That impulse is the subject of this book.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • David Brooks challenges us to rebalance the scales between the focus on external success—“résumé virtues”—and our core principles. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that have brought millions of readers to his New York Times column and his previous bestsellers, 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. 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 a strong inner character. Labor activist Frances Perkins understood the need to suppress parts of herself so that 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. “Joy,” David Brooks writes, “is a byproduct experienced by people who are aiming for something else. But it comes.” Praise for The Road to Character “A hyper-readable, lucid, often richly detailed human story.”—The New York Times Book Review “This profound and eloquent book is written with moral urgency and philosophical elegance.”—Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday Demon “A powerful, haunting book that works its way beneath your skin.”—The Guardian “Original and eye-opening . . . Brooks is a normative version of Malcolm Gladwell, culling from a wide array of scientists and thinkers to weave an idea bigger than the sum of its parts.”—USA Today