Our 2021 Book Recommendation of the Year: The Second Mountain, by David Brooks
We’re big readers, and every year we look back over the titles we’ve read and identify one book that had the most profound impact on our outlook and day-to-day lives. The 2021 award goes to David Brooks’ The Second Mountain. Tagline: the quest for a moral life.
Read The Guardian’s review of The Second Mountain >>
From the much-loved NYT columnist, David Brooks, The Second Mountain frames a beautiful metaphor that many people spend years if not decades summiting “the first mountain,” (wealth, career, social status, and the quest for individualism that is all-too encouraged by the prevailing culture) only to discover that the achievements of the first mountain eventually feel hollow, lonely even. What follows is a descent into the valley—a reorientation—and the beginning of another ascent: the second mountain.
Climbing the second mountain requires four commitments—to vocation, marriage, philosophy and faith, and the community. And only by making those four commitments well can one experience the paradoxical freedom that emerges from properly founded attachments. This book is about how to found those attachments well.
We read the book on the road in the midst of a season of pain—loss of Dusty’s father. In a way, Brooks became a shepherd to us as we (abruptly, to some outside observers) shifted our focus from first mountain pursuits to second mountain pursuits.
