New York Times columnist David Brooks examines the deeper values that should inform our lives. Responding to what he calls the culture of the Big Me, which emphasizes external success, Brooks challenges us, and himself, to rebalance the scales between our "resume virtues" -- achieving wealth, fame, and status -- and our "eulogy virtues," those that exist at the core of our being: kindness, bravery, honesty, or faithfulness, focusing on what kind of...

"As David Brooks observes, "There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or 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,...

Augustus Melmotte is a fraudulent foreign financier who preys on dissolute nobility - using charm to tempt the weak into making foolish investments in his dubious schemes. Persuaded to put money into a notional plot to run a railroad from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, the capricious gambler Felix Carbury soon becomes one of his victims. But as Melmotte climbs higher in society, his web of deceit - which also draws in characters as diverse as his own...

Contains twenty essays that provide various perspectives on sports and athletes, debating the benefits of sports to children, whether college sports should be reformed, the problem of discrimination in sports, and drug use.