The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life

Once I started reading the book, I had a hard time putting it down. The book was of great importance in understanding the phases of life, giving me a clear direction toward the second mountain. I decided to share a summary of the book to help you draw a more accurate opinion of the content.

Let me break the review down in 2 parts. First, I’ll share why I chose to read the book and some personal thoughts about the reading. Next, I hope to put together a brief summary from each chapter, including short excerpts highlighted while taking notes.

PERSONAL THOUGHTS

We know that following a natural eating plan, having restful nights of sleep, moving our physical bodies frequently, and even engaging on spiritual practices are all good ways to preserve our health. In addition to these aspects, a committed life to our vocation, family, and community is equally important to our overall wellbeing. I pre-ordered the book because I wanted to explore these commitments in greater detail so I can better contribute to our society.

Some of my favorite takeaways were: [1] an individualistic mindset can offer a series of experiences but they won’t fulfill us because these experiences aren’t serving a large cause; [2] the uncommitted person is the unremembered person; [3] when we reach out and build community, we nourish ourselves; [4] the completeness of a couple who have been together for years defines a happy marriage; [5] being alone in the wilderness brings an array of possibilities; and [6] the second mountain is a more generous and satisfying phase of life. Having said that, I decided to read it one more time before implementing some of the learnings.

SUMMARY

[Introduction] Right in the beginning we learn how to differentiate the mountains we are meant to climb in life. David starts off by saying that “if the first mountain is about building up the ego and defining the self, the second mountain is about shedding the ego and losing the self. If the first mountain is about acquisition, the second mountain is about contribution. If the first mountain is elitist—moving up—the second mountain is egalitarian—planting yourself amid those who need, and walking arm in arm with them.” He decided to study commitment on a continual effort to write his own way to a better life after having failed at significant commitments during his life. At the end of the introduction we explore the meaning of joy, the layers of joy, and the highest form of joy, which he calls the moral joy.

[Part I : The Two Mountains]

[Chapter 1] Our old moral ecology had a lot of virtues—emphasized by humility and reticence. However, as David explains, it had also failings, such as tolerance for racism and barriers against professional women, which ultimately made it intolerable. In the early 60s a more individualistic culture emerged, breaking through many of the chains that held down women and oppressed minorities. Despite that, “when individualism becomes the absolutely dominant ethos of a civilization—when it isn’t counterbalanced with any competing ethos—then the individuals within it may have maximum freedom, but the links between the individuals slowly begin to dissolve.”

[Chapter 2] Here we take a look at the ambiguity of freedom. The main message is that political freedom is great, but personal, social, and emotional freedom can be detrimental when they become the end goal. David says, “freedom is a river you want to get across so you can plant yourself on the other side—and fully commit to something.”

[Chapter 3] Now we shift gears toward workaholism, which can be surprisingly easy to become emotionally avoidant and morally decoupled, to gradually tamp down the highs and lows and simply live in neutral. The insecure overachiever, David writes, “never fully wills anything and thus is never fully satisfied.” Although his status is rising, the heart and the soul of an insecure overachiever are never fully engaged.

[Chapter 4] Using Leo Tolstoy as an example, who at some point felt sick of life and saw no point in it, David affirms that “wealth and fame and accomplishment don’t spare anybody from the valley.” Although there are people who go through life without ever stumbling into the valley, most of us have had to endure some season of suffering when we had to ask ourselves the fundamental questions. Suffering, according to David, comes in many forms—some may feel a gradual loss of enthusiasm in what they are doing, whereas others experience a dramatic crisis. Hyper-individualism, he continues, “has led to a society where people live further and further apart from one another—socially, emotionally, and even physically.” And that has produced 4 interrelated social crises. One by one, each crisis is explained in detail: [1] the loneliness crisis; [2] distrust; [3] the crisis of meaning; and [4] tribalism.

[Chapter 5] The right thing to do when we are in moments of suffering is to stand erect in the suffering. It is about understanding that our suffering is a task that, if handled correctly, will lead to enlargement, not diminishment. When we listen to our lives, according to David, we shed the old self so the new self can emerge. Going out alone into the wilderness is one of the smartest bet to change our experience of time because it teaches us “the ability to rest in the uncertainty, to not jump to premature conclusions.”

[Chapter 6] This chapter is about discovering the role of our heart and soul. Although we are taught by our culture that we are primarily thinking beings, when we are in the valley our view of what is important is transformed. As David puts, “we begin to realize that the reasoning brain is actually the third most important part of the consciousness.” The first and most important part is the desiring heart, and the second is the soul. We learn that our emotions aren’t the opposite of reason; they are the fountain of reason and often contain a wisdom the analytic brain can’t reach. In the valley, we “learn we aren’t just a brain and a set of talents to impress the world, but a heart and soul.”

[Chapter 7] Whereas earlier we explored the first mountain and the valley, now we focus on how a committed life will take us to the second mountain climb. David explains that commitments begin with some movement of the heart and soul, we “fall in love with a person or a cause or an idea, and if that love is deep enough, we decide to dedicate a significant chunk of our lives to it.” He adds that a commitment is making a promise to something without expecting a return. There may be a positive return from a commitment, but that isn’t why we make it.

[Chapter 8] Although there are many kinds of second-mountain people, they tend to share a lot of common values. David explains in detail that people living the second mountain: [1] have had a motivational shift in their lives; [2] have a desire to live in intimate relation with others to make a difference in the world; [3] are driven by a desire for belonging and generosity; [4] are attached to a particular place to devote themselves; [5] assume responsibility; [6] devote to radical hospitality; and [7] are extremely relational.

[Part II : Vocation]

[Chapter 9] In the vocation mentality, David explains, “you aren’t living on the ego level of your consciousness—working because the job pays well or makes life convenient. You are down in the substrate.” It is interesting to note that vocations have testing periods—periods when the costs outweigh the benefits—which we must go through to reach another level of intensity. At these moments, if we were driven by a career mentality we would quit. However, “a person who has found a vocation doesn’t feel she has a choice. It would be a violation of her own nature. So she pushes through when it doesn’t seem to make sense.”

[Chapter 10] Through a genuine example of how E. O. Wilson found nature at age 7 to become one of the most prominent naturalists, David explains that the annunciation moment happens when “something sparks an interest, or casts a spell, and arouses a desire that somehow prefigures much of what comes after in a life, both the delights and the challenges.” Although childhood annunciation moments are common, they also happen often in adulthood. The tricky part of an annunciation moment is not having it, but realizing we are having it. He says, “the best thing about an annunciation moment is that it gives you an early hint of where your purpose lies.”

[Chapter 11] This chapter focuses on the value of having good mentors. Good mentors, according to David, teach us the tactic wisdom embedded in any craft, how to deal with error, how to embrace the struggle , send us into the world and, in some sense, cut us off.

[Chapter 12] Here we take a close look at making transformational choices—the big commitments in life. All decisions involve a large measure of uncertainty about the future, but “what makes transformational choices especially tough is that you don’t know what your transformed self will be like or will want, after the vagaries of life begin to have their effects.” David explains that since every choice is a renunciation, or an infinity of renunciations, some of us are so paralyzed by big choices that we skip them. Through examples and advices, he shares ways to counterbalance these fears in order to make meaningful vocation decisions.

[Chapter 13] David starts by drawing a useful distinction, “a job is a way of making a living, but work is a particular way of being needed, of fulfilling the responsibility that life has placed before you.” All vocational work, no matter how deeply it touches us, involves those moments when are confronted by the laborious task. All real work, he adds, “requires a dedication to engage in deliberate practice, the willingness to do the boring things over and over again, just to master a skill.” He says that if we know what we want to do, just start doing it, “don’t delay because you think this job or that degree would be good preparation for doing what you eventually want to do.”

[Part III : Marriage]

[Chapter 14] Who we marry is one of the most important decisions we will ever make. David says that “passion peaks among the young, but marriage is the thing that peaks in old age.” One of the problems of the individualistic view, he points, is that “if you go into marriage seeking self-actualization, you will always feel frustrated because marriage, and specially parenting, will constantly be dragging you away from the goals of self.” Another problem is that the heart yearns to fuse with others, and it can only happen by transcending the self in order to serve the marriage. Although we see a general effort to scale marriage back and shrink it down to manageable size, David by no means forgets to discuss that “marriage works best when it is maximal.”

[Chapter 15] Here we explore the first stages of intimacy. David explains that it all starts with a single glance, which sparks the desire to know the other person, encouraging us to engage in a dialogue. He ends the chapter by affirming that “when you choose to marry someone, you better choose someone you will enjoy talking with for the rest of your life.”

[Chapter 16] Now we advance toward the next stages of intimacy. David describes it as the combustion of the relationship, “we are at the sunniest and most carefree stage of intimacy, the bright springtime when delight is at its peak without any of the urgent stakes that will come later.” It is the phase of peak idealization. At some point of the journey toward intimacy, we will eventually have a relationship-defining talk. This new layer of intimacy—that comes with responsibilities—is about unselfish actions. Forgiveness is key at any crisis that will occur after being around long enough to reveal our natural selves.

[Chapter 17] This chapter is dedicated to the marriage decision. David acknowledges that before making such a decision, we should step back and make an appraisal. He makes it clear that “everybody spends too much time appraising the other person when making marriage decisions, but the person who can really screw things up is you.” Based on that assumption, he shares questions for personal reflection. Once these questions are answered, he discusses the 3 lenses we may apply when making the rest of the marriage decision: [1] the psychological lens; [2] the emotional lens; and [3] the moral lens.

[Chapter 18] As a part of the marriage, David explains, “the only way to thrive is to become a better person—more patient, wise, compassionate, persevering, communicative, and humble.” Based on a wealth of knowledge supported by figures such as John Gottman, Gary Chapman, Alain de Botton, and Ayala Malach Pines, David explores a series of aspects to help us navigate through the ups and downs of our love relationships.

[Part IV : Philosophy And Faith]

[Chapter 19] David shares that his intellectual commitment was shaped during college days. He then explores how universities became diverse and pluralistic over the years, shifting from the more humanistic ideal to the research ideal. He argues that, “students are taught to engage in critical thinking, to doubt, distance, and take things apart, but they are given almost no instruction on how to attach to things, how to admire, to swear loyalty to, to copy and serve.” Last, David shares 6 intellectual virtues his professors taught him: [1] they welcomed the students into the tradition of long conversation; [2] they introduced a range of history’s moral ecologies to the students; [3] they taught them to see well to the thing they were looking at as itself, not just as a mirror of their own interests; [4] they taught them intellectual courage; [5] they gave them emotional knowledge to refine the feelings in certain situations; and [6] the professors gave students new things to love by exposing them to great masterpieces.

[Chapter 20] Mystical experiences, as David explains, “are moments when the shell of normal reality cracks, and people perceive some light from someplace beyond shining though.” Although these experiences often happen in nature, many history’s great figures had mystical experiences while in prison because “being imprisoned takes away everything else—material striving, external freedom, and busy schedules.” David shares Viktor Frankl’s dramatic experience in the Nazi concentration, where he concluded that the prisoners who survived of diseases or some breakdown were generally the ones that had some external commitment that they desired and pushed toward.

[Chapter 21] This is a long chapter, yet interesting. David walks us through his religious journey from childhood all the way to adulthood. He shows that our faiths, feelings, and struggles evolve over time. During the process of inner transformation, according to him, we don’t “really notice it day by day, but when I look back at who I was 5 years ago it is kind of amazing, as I bet it is for you in your journey. It is a change in the quality of awareness. It is a gradual process of acquiring a new body of knowledge that slowly, slowly gets stored in the center of your being.”

[Chapter 22] During his journey, he found out along the way that “religious people and institutions sometimes built ramps that made it easier to continue my journey, or they built walls, making the journey harder.” Based on that, he explores details of common ramps and walls we may encounter during our journey.

[Part V : Community]

[Chapter 23] Now we shift gears toward healthy communities. To better understand what a healthy community looks like, we first learn how social isolation can be detrimental to our communities and, at the end, to ourselves. David explains that community is “restored by people who are living on the second mountain, people whose ultimate loyalty is to others and not themselves.” Although building a community is a slow and complex process, David walks us though the first stages of community creation. Community renewal begins with commitment. Then, we have to fix the neighborhood as a whole instead of focusing on individuals one by one. From the diagnosis, we work on finding ways to bring the neighborhood together—“to replace distance with intimacy and connection.” Once people are gathered together, in some way or another, storytelling begins—“vulnerability is shared, emotions are aroused, combustion happens.”

[Chapter 24] David explains that a community is formed by a group of people organized around a common story. In addition to sharing a story, communities thrive through a set of local codes such as: [1] being proactive toward internal needs; [2] offering radical hospitality; [3] having a long-term commitment; and [4] sharing common norms and behaviors.

[Chapter 25] The last chapter is one of the best book conclusions I have ever read. To find belonging, meaning, and purpose we are encourage to “go deep into ourselves and find there our illimitable ability to care, and then spread outward in commitment to others.” David puts together the different elements of his argument in a manifesto form, divided in hyper-individualism, relationalism, the process of becoming a person, the good life, the good society, and a declaration of interdependence.

Take care,

Haical

A profoundly inspiring book that challenges the conventional notion of success and happiness. Through personal stories and insightful analysis, Brooks guides readers on a transformative journey towards a more meaningful and purposeful life. With its engaging writing style and profound wisdom, this book is a must-read for anyone seeking a deeper sense of fulfillment and connection.

In the last five years David Brooks has been on a journey. The dissolution of his first marriage, the decline of neo-conservatism in Republican circles and his own involvement in sponsoring people involved in community and personal restoration has led him to revise his view of the world.

Brooks now sees the struggle for personal advancement—for more money, status and power—as merely a lesser mountain for people to climb. The pursuit of happiness, the American dream...these individualistic strivings have been too emphasized in the contemporary West. There is a second mountain that touches the deeper aspects of our humanity. One climbs it by self-sacrifice and commitment to spouse and community. Above all, one realizes that true joy in life comes from believing and serving something greater than yourself.

Brooks further believes this journey has importance for all of America. It is the baby-boomers hyper-focus on individual achievement that is at the root of our current political malaise. Only by a societal return to an other-centered life can we overcome our tribalism and divisions.

If this journey sounds rather familiar it is because it is the same voyage many people have made throughout history. Thus, Brooks spends most of the book focused on the biographies and thoughts of great men and women with similar experiences. His own personal journey is fittingly secondary.

But this is where the book has a fundamental weakness. While Brooks and those he cites can provide vivid testimonials of their experience there is no effort to ground any of this in a scientific account of human nature, a history of the world or our particular species, etc.

After reading the book one might be left with the impression one has when someone describes how they found God and how that pulled them out of depression, anxiety, lethargy or some other predicament. No one would want to tell somebody to abandon a belief that had such beneficial effects, but a personal experience is just that—personal. Whether it translates from one person to another is highly doubtful.

So while I admire Brooks’ bravery in writing such a counter-cultural work, I have to conclude that the book’s overall argument relies on nothing but testimonials. For someone who gives annual awards to social scientists this seems like a great lacunae. Why should I trust these testimonials if my experience of the world is very different?

In short, if people read this book and become convinced to be other-centered and discover great joy in their life, I would be the last person to dissuade them. But from David Brooks I wanted more. I wanted some account of human nature that would ground this other-directedness in something rational. A powerful testimonial but, in the end, only a testimonial. In my opinion, that makes The Second Mountain an enjoyable but not an essential book.

There's a good deal to like about Brooks' newest run at "character." Unfortunately, my quibble isn't with what Brooks says; it's with what he doesn't say. Once again, FTM: Follow The Money.

There's a huge, concerted, well-funded effort in this country to promote the very elements that Brooks belatedly laments. The corporate, right-wing, "conservative" view is to bash anything and everything about government programs, social organizations, community organizations, unions, religious efforts at social justice (well, except the fundamentalist "prosperity Gospel" idea that society does best when you get rich, of course), and every other collective effort to support the broader society. Unfortunately, Brooks (willfully, I believe) ignores this pernicious activity. That message is, "Have a problem? Don't look to government. Have issues in your life? It's your problem; don't look any farther than your own nose because it's your fault. Concerned about society as a whole? There's no solution outside of the individual--don't look to an organization to help you do anything about it."

People lamenting the cult of individualism need to look to the sources of--and the huge amounts of money and power behind--the messaging of individualism, and the denigration of social and community institutions that have been the bedrock of American democracy.

For a great article on this intentional social destruction, go to bostonreview dot net and search on The Privatization of Hope by Ronald Aronson. He writes...

"What a spectacle is offered by the privatization of hope: the displacement from the social to the individual, the growth of the personal at the expense of the social, and the remaking of the social into the biographical. These are driven, among other things, by relations of power and domination and by the overwhelming force exerted on every aspect of our beings by the economy and its priorities. Under these conditions, basic social impulses such as the need to contribute to a wider community become other than themselves without completely losing their original character, which abides in a repressed form. We can imagine a rebalancing of the social and the personal as a kind of “return of the repressed” but only through a transformation of the economic order that has been driving it.

"That order has imposed a deliberate ideological and political project aiming to erode social connectedness and conviction. The first politician who sought to implement this revived Hobbesianism was British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: “There is no such thing as society, only individuals and families,” she famously declared, which turned out to prophesy this transformation. Economics was a method whose “object is to change the soul.” A generation later in the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere, that object appears to have been realized.

"We have witnessed an immensely effective, well organized, and lavishly funded effort to reshape values, ideas, and attitudes. Writers working for right-wing think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation have implored us to turn away from treating the public realm as a terrain for improvement and change. They have been teaching cynicism about collective action and encouraging instead individual responsibility, personal initiative, and the centrality of private activities."

I wish Brooks would accept responsibility for his "conservative" brethrens' contributions to--and support of--this mess instead of blaming the victims once again.

Short version: The thesis of the book is composed of trite "being nice is nice" statements, the writing is bad when it's not recycled, the research is incredibly sloppy, and the elements don't get at all. The Second Mountain is a mess from front to back, and there's really no reason to read it.

Disclosure: I've had a problem with David Brooks ever since I was in my rural Kansas high school, watching him try and fail to explain my own life to me. My opinion has not improved with time. I previously reviewed The Road to Character, a lazy, poorly-written and mendacious book that received an enormous amount of unearned praise. So here I am again with the follow-up, expecting more of the same. To be fair, it is different than The Road to Character. That's about the last fair thing that I'll be saying here.

The thing that bears mentioning first is how little of this book is original content. It is page after page of quotes, book excerpts, poems, paraphrases, and other material from significant people. That Brooks relies heavily on the work of others is par for the course - it's the sheer volume that's remarkable, with page-length quotes and even one whole chapter that's 100% the thoughts of others. On top of that, Brooks' own additions are mostly recycled from his columns, speeches, books, and interviews. If you're a David Brooks fan, there's no need to read this book since you've likely read it already.

Brooks' writing continues to slide downhill. His bag of tricks hasn't changed much since his last book, though his skill with those gimmicks is deteriorating. He reuses favorite words ("substrate" is a new favorite) but not often enough for it to be a motif, and his love of willful repetition combined with some fairly long paragraphs makes for some readability problems. Already, these glitches makes the book feel like a first draft. The worst of it, though, remains the metaphors. Figurative language has always been Brooks' greatest weakness, but the amazing part in The Second Mountain is how grotesque they can be. There are comparisons to a fish biting on a hook, being turned into a vampire, being mauled by a leopard and falling onto jagged rocks - and these are comparisons to things he considers good and desirable.

Then there's the research. Not as much of it this time since it's not a science-flavored book, but it's there and it's bad. Even before I received my copy, I found an egregious one that's visible in the sample. He mentions a 2016 poll of Americans by Gallup which, if you look into it, is actually a nonscientific survey taken by a philosopher of three hundred-odd of his mostly British followers. I'm guessing that this is not the only failure, but it's hard to check the sources as Brooks has abandoned the numbered endnote system in favor of a seemingly incomplete chapter-by-chapter summary of sources.

So that's the mechanical side, what about the content? Brooks seems to think he's landed upon some world-changing philosophy, but it's pretty banal stuff - be nice to people, get a job you like, talk to your neighbor, my alma mater is more meaningful than yours, etc. There's nothing groundbreaking here unless you're a genuine narcissist (as Brooks assumes most people are). Supplementing this is a series of brief character sketches of do-gooders which are nice, but give this the feel of an inspirational gift book of the kind we've all received and are now gathering dust in storage. The galling part here is Brooks' insistence on tying these people together into a nonexistent movement and then projecting his own essentially conservative beliefs onto them. Do all of these folks really want to reduce the federal government to a symbolic role and have neighborhood groups and charities do everything? Brooks assumes that they do - doesn't seem like he asked them.

What of Brooks himself in all of this? The one part that was genuinely interesting to me was the prospect that the secretive Brooks might actually talk about himself. He does...briefly, and in an oddly detached way. For a man who condemns the intellectual approach as shallow, he sure embraces it. This appears throughout the book with his insistence on splitting everything into phases (The stages of falling in love, the stages of building a community, etc.), but they really stand out when he talks about his own experiences. Early on, he describes a time when it seemed like his infant son might die...but there's no emotional content, he's only using it to confirm a point he was trying to make.

The longest example of this is in the chapter on faith, and I almost gave him a sympathy second star for this section simply because it entailed him writing earnestly about himself, something he seems to fear. There's a part where he describes a "conversion" - conversion to what I'm not sure, he's characteristically vague. I've read my fair share of conversion stories, as has Brooks, and this one...it felt like he was writing what he thought he should write. Strained metaphors, forced emotions, and a non-conclusion that seems to exist solely to put his story alongside all these other accounts he's seen. I don't think this is insincerity - part of it is Brooks' critical limitations as a writer showing through, but another part speaks to the greater problem with this book.

I want to revisit the quote overkill, because there's more to this than common laziness or incompetence. Brooks' writing really shows off a lack of synthesis, which is to say meaningful learning. Throughout the book, there are little inconsistencies here and there. It's important to be "rooted" and commited to a place, but people in the "valley" need to travel far away...it's good when children are exuberant about specific things but in college students it's a sign that they're chasing a shallow "Instagram life"...not big points, but they add up. The whole thing is subtly incoherent, and the feeling of discontinuity is hard to shake.

In the end, the problem with The Second Mountain is the same as the problem with The Road to Character. Elsewhere, I compared that book to a series of book reports. The Second Mountain feels more like a paper by a college freshman trying to coast through a Western Civ course he doesn't feel he needs to take - grab some heavy sources, dump them together, hope the professor gives you a B. Anyone can quote endless sources, that's not learning. Learning comes when you take those sources, compare them against each other, and figure out how to reconcile them with each other and with what you know from your own life. That's synthesis. Brooks never does that, and never really tries.

But of course Brooks isn't seeking synthesis - he has the answer. In this book as with The Road to Character, he started off with the answer in mind. His goal was not to learn, but to support his existing paleoconservative worldview. Everything he saw "proved" that something he believed was right all along, but he never tried to make these bits of information agree with each other. It's a picture puzzle assembled from many different puzzles, the pieces forced and cut and glued to make them fit.

In some sense, this is the essential David Brooks. This is what happens after decades of hedging out all critical voices, leaving only a chorus of people telling you that you're brilliant. Brooks really hasn't had an original idea in many years, content to remix his conservatism over and over again to the expected accolades from the usual crowd. He claims now that those accolades and his status are shallow and unsatisfying, though I'm sure he'll accept them. But will he ever learn to accept the possibility that he's not great? After years of preaching humility, will he ever put down his biographies and listen to someone who disagrees?

This book was an incredibly difficult book to read because it was more of a metaphorical hairball coughed up by a cat than a work of enlightenment.

We purchase books such as "The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life," so that we can be enlightened in ways that make us better people.

However, I have a standard. The standard is this: if an author is going to write about morality and/or character development, I expect the author to follow the very principles of which they write and of which they purport to live.

But, let me review the book itself.

Who edited this book? Did anyone edit this book? Where are the commas? Oxford commas are nice, but there are few correctly-placed commas or no commas at all. Where are the paragraph breaks when the content of a paragraph changes?

Some quotes from the book: just for fun, let's see if you can spot the grammar errors.

"The yoke committed people place on themselves is not a painful yoke. Most of the time it is a delicious yoke."

"Sickness wanders my body with the fires with my love for you. Pain like a boil about to burst with my love for you. Consumed by fire with my love for you."

"The sin doesn't have to be ignored. But the wrong act is no longer a barrier to a relationship."

"There is no loneliness so lonely as the loneliness you feel when you are lying there loveless in bed with another."

Let's back up.

David's book before "The Second Mountain" was about character. Apparently, David received A LOT of help on that book from his assistant, Anne, who is nearly half his age and who can be seen sitting on his lap in online photos. But, don't listen to me, listen to David. Of that book and his assistant's involvement, David mused:

"If not for her [Anne Snyder], then I could not have written a book about man’s moral sentiments with such precision or such elegance; It was all her. I was merely smitten with the fine turn of her prose; once bitten by the sharp turn of her thoughts, evident on my mind like a sting on skin, and delicate and irresistible as a little kitten, I—I’m not ashamed to say—became a nobler man, a better author, bigger than my critics, certainly humbler in my own life. Can a muse be another half of the same person? She is the sole source of the vigor of my prose. I also thank my wife.”

Hmmm... that book on character was written when David was married to his wife Sarah Brooks, who bore David three children.

But, one day, a woman nearly young enough to be David Brook’s daughter, Anne Snyder, was hired as his assistant. Anne was a Christian and she DEEPLY influenced an ethnically-Jewish David.

So, at some point David and his wife divorced and David married his assistant, Anne, who still remains young enough to be his daughter.

Did they have an affair?

Some say there is no proof of an affair. However, what David Brooks wrote about Anne Snyder while he was married to Sarah Brooks is the typical drivel that comes from the mouths of those having an emotional affair. The way David talks about Anne's influence is classic material written by someone who is having an emotional affair. Emotional affairs are just as harmful as physical affairs. But, a passion so great as the passion David had for Anne smells of a physical affair. (Or, maybe David just developed The Passion of the Christ)?

I could be wrong though.

Nevertheless, when people have chaste relationships, phrases such as, "smitten with the fine turn of her prose," or "bitten by the sharp turn of her thoughts," and "delicate and irresistible as a little kitten," do NOT come to mind. Would you write that about your grandfather? Me neither!

What is my problem with this book?

It appears that David's first mountain rose tall with his first wife, Sarah. Then, David experienced a valley where his mountain did not rise at all. David's second mountain rose when his assistant, Anne, collided with a bottle of Viagra. That's when his book about The Second Mountain was conceived.

Some of you who are fans of David Brooks might write my comments off as an ad hominem argument. However, when someone is writing a self-help book about lofty ideals, I expect that author to be an expert in those ideals. It is offensive for David to write a book about lofty ideals when he cannot even follow his own lofty ideals. Thus, he cannot be an expert in the lofty ideals of which he writes.

Now, let us explore the nature of an ad hominem argument.

A true ad hominem argument could look like this: Let is imagine David Brooks wrote a tome comparing and contrasting the works of Socrates and Plato. Let’s imagine David gave readers a tour of the historical context in which these great thinkers lived. Let’s imagine David included in his book how these historical contexts need to be examined in order to truly understand the works of Plato and Socrates. If David Brooks did that, I would not write a review pointing out his hypocrisy. If someone attacked David’s personal life when he was merely writing a history book, that would be an ad hominem argument. I do not support true an hominem arguments.

David can write about ideals, we can buy his books and fill his personal coffers, and then we can aspire to live those ideals while David does whatever he pleases. (Pretty nice gig for David, am I right?) ;-)

I don't know about you, but, I find it deplorable that David can write a book about ideals that he doesn't follow.

If I want to read about lofty ideals, I will go back and read my Tanakh and read the stories of Moses, Esther, and Daniel (just to name a few).

David's book is typical of someone who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Someone who has NPD is able to write a book about the moral ideals he does NOT live, while having no insight into the incongruity of such an act.

Or, maybe David just suffers from a type of cognitive dissonance that’s as high as Mt. Everest. (Maybe that’s the third impossible to climb mountain and so he doesn’t conquer it).

Okay, I will go back to reading biographies about people who actually lived moral lives even when life got difficult.

I will also continue to look to Louise Hay for inspiration; I sorely miss her.

David, if you read your reviews, please take this feedback and think about it. Also, Please ensure you gave your wife, Sarah Brooks, an Orthodox Jewish GET, so that she can remarry and find love again. If you have a ketubah, I hope that Sarah takes it to burning man and puts it inside the “burning man” before someone lights him up.

But, what do I know? I am only a lowly human who completed some graduate work at Oxford University.

As for you, Anne Snyder, just because you are a Christian, this fact does not absolve you from your own actions. There is no such thing as "the Jesus ticket" and the only way to thrive in life is to start relationships on the right foundation. You probably have built walls of denial around your marriage to David, but this does not make your prior actions acceptable.

David, please stop showing up on PBS. PBS is my favorite network; stop polluting the stream and lowering the collective emotional intelligence and integrity of this country.

-Alexa