How to Know a Person - by David Brooks

Book Synopsis

"More than a guide to better conversations, it's a blueprint for a more connected and humane way of living. It's a must-read for anyone looking to deepen their relationships and broaden their perspectives."--Bill Gates, GatesNotes (Summer Reading Pick)

As David Brooks observes, "There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen--to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood."

And yet all around are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing essential questions: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person's story should you pay attention to?

Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception.

The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them and, in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.

Review Quotes

The Second Mountain

"Deeply moving, frequently eloquent and extraordinarily incisive."--The Washington Post

The Road to Character

"David Brooks's gift--as he might put it in his swift, engaging way--is for making obscure but potent social studies research accessible and even startling."--The New York Times Book Review

"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

The Social Animal

"Provocative and fascinating . . . seeks to do nothing less than revolutionize our notions about how we function and conduct our lives."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Brooks's considerable achievement comes in his ability to elevate the unseen aspects of private experience into a vigorous and challenging conversation about what we all share."--San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author