How to Know a Person

The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

De: David Brooks

Narrado por: David Brooks

Brought to you by Penguin.

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 #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain

If you are going to care for someone, you must first understand them. If you're going to hire, marry, or befriend someone, you have to be able to see them. If you are going to work closely with someone, you have to be able to make them feel recognized and valued. As David Brooks observes, "The older I get, the more I come to the certainty that there is one skill at the center of any healthy family, company, classroom, community or nation: the ability to see each other, to know other people, to make 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 to 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, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience, and from the worlds of theatre, history, and education, to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps listeners become more understanding and considerate towards others; it helps listeners 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 a profoundly creative act: 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, seeking to understand and yearning to be understood.

©2023 David Brooks (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Book of the year!

Absolutely loved it - from the structure to the insight, this has to be one of the best self help books I’ve ever read.

Enlightening

I found this book fascinating. There is so much to reflect on and apply in your life and relationships.

Lot of value for me

It’s really nice to have something to aspire to mapped out in such detail.

We can’t aspire to something we aren’t even aware of.

It’s reassuring and useful that David wasn’t good at this skill. That he’s on the path to improving. And that he doesn’t feel he’s there yet. The section at the very end where he talks about how he rates himself on the skills is a wonderful tool to make the process less intimidating for ourselves.

The complexity of a person, and how I see myself in others

It is an intriguing book, weaving stories in between made it more relatable and reflected a lot on my relationships

Too religious for me.

Not sure if I will finish this book, as had not realized it was quite religious in its content. I am not religious at all and am finding it too intense with Bible and Jesus references. This didn't come through in the preview.