How to Know a Person : The Art of Seeing Others Deeply by David Brooks
Paperback and English
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 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 we humans don’t do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks
sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for
all of us: 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 his determination to grow as a
person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and
from 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.