How to Know a Person

By David Brooks,

Book cover of How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

Book description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives—from the author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain

As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill…

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Why read it?

1 author picked How to Know a Person as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

In this book, New York Times columnist David Brooks describes research he has uncovered examining how we should think about other people. He admonishes us to avoid the trappings of closed-minded thinking when we evaluate or attempt to “see” other people. For instance, he advises against “objectivism,” based on aggregated statistics that we are today constantly confronted with, in favor of particularism, seeing each individual as a unique person. Corresponding with that advice comes the suggestion to avoid “essentialism”–the belief that groups have essential characteristics–and “the static mindset”–the idea that people do not change.

These are all characteristics of a…

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