And thats a look at some of the current nonfiction bestsellers according to the Chicago Tribune. New york times columnist david brooks is next on on booktv. You look so where are character comes from and how it is shaped. He argues and our modern culture we live either for our resume for our social connections. David needs no introduction he will get one anyway. David serves as an oped columnist for the New York Times which is done for over a dozen years producing two columns every week as well as a commentator on pbs news hour nprs all things considered, and nbcs meet the press. He praises serve as a Police Reporter for the City News Bureau which is a wire service joined only by the Chicago Tribune and suntimes, writer for the Washington Times and a book review editor, reporter and occasional movie critic and later oped editor at the wall street journal. He answered as a Senior Editor of the Weekly Standard as well as contributing editor for the atlantic and newsweek. A best selling author brooks books includes bubbles in paradise, on paradise drive, and his third book the social animal to hidden sources of love character and achievement. Beginning of the times number one. And, of course, the work he is discussing tonight is already number one on the amazon hardcover bestseller. In addition to all of this [applause] david teaches at Yale University and the daemon of the American Academy of arts and sciences. Responding to david tonight is Michael GersonNational Syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in the Washington Post and author of heroic conservativism as well as coauthor with pete weiner of the city of men, religion and politics in a new era. In addition he serves as a Senior Advisor at one a bipartisan or physician dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty and reasonable diseases as well as a has to develop at the center for economics, government and Public Policy at wheaton. He served as a senior fellow at the council on Foreign Relations and is a Senior Editor at the work report as well as a top aide to president george w. Bush both for policy and strategic planning, and as chief speechwriter. At the conclusion of david remarks mike will raise provide response and then look at the itunes questions. David, welcome. [applause] thank you cherie. About 10 years ago i was driving home from work, newshour and it was a summer afternoon or evening about 7 00. I pulled my house in bethesda and when a driver that went around to the side and i pulled in and i could see the backyard. My kids who within 12, nine and five, had gotten hold of a ball cheap brown balls and theyre taking it up in the air and they were chasing across the yard and they were laughing and giggling. And the ball was worked into the air and the sun was coming down through the trees and the grass that was strangely green for my yard last night so i pulled into the driveway. I saw them rolling on top of each other after a day of work in unexpected or an unexpected beautiful site. I stared at him for a few minutes. It was one of those moments when life and time are suspended and when reality spills outside its bounds and you just get a sense of feeling overwhelmed regret. What did i do to deserve this . And he feels it seemed by a duty you havent earned. And that sense of getting subsumed by beauty you havent earned creates a strange desire, a strange story. It give you a glimpse of a higher choice than you ever get in work and then it exposes something deep inside you and you want to be worthy of what you have been given. And so we all know the word to that undeserved gift. And you can get it around different people. I had at that moment looking at my kids, i remember seeing people that have an inner light. I was at the American EnterpriseInstitute Last summer and happen to be seated next to the body llama the dalai lama at lunch. He last unusual moments until he just starts laughing and you want to be polite so you laugh back. [laughter] you do the laughing and feel comfortable with the guy, and i asked him i said you have any candy in there . People dont stuff it back and basically everything you get in the first class cabin of an airliner. Little air plugs a blindfold, a little razor and chocolate bar. When you run someone like that with an inner like you want to feel worthy of him because there is joy there. I was in Frederick Maryland with my friend charlesworth about a year ago and iran i ray mabus and women who helped immigrants learn to read. It can take years to do this process. And when i walked into the room about 30 women aged 5080 he felt the weight of goodness coming off the glow of loving care musical voices that make you feel valued and important. And again a sense of just lightness and in her life. You want if you worthy of that. If you have the career success ive had you think i did okay but what do i dont have. I dont have that. You want to be worthy of that. And when they come to the trinity forum, i experience a different sort of undeserved love. You so may friends in this room who have not only exemplified certain ways of being in the world but who have actively come and help me in times of need come in times of vulnerability. Cherie who leads the organization Michael Peter come for the support and counsel, stewart hosted me in their home april and christie younger in years, wiser and age. Jenny, i see barb over there. And soliciting a bit of a coming home but also a bit appealing to these people have helped me more than i deserve. And when youre surrounded by that if you like you want to live up to it. And the book is really a product of five years of the kind of searching. And the book starts with this distinction which cherie mission between the resin and virtues. Whether we are brave, shine, courageous kind of relationship ago, when we were capable of deep love. Well know the eulogy virtues are more important especially in washington come sometimes we place more emphasis on the resin and were clear about how to direct rhythm in our how to deserve a good eulogy. It was certainly true of me. And a book that i think about was a book written in 1965 called the lonely man of faith. You look at genesis and our two accounts at genesis which stand for the two sides of our nature. Which he called adam one and it into. Adamonis basically the resin at them, the outward and wants to go and pretend to think there adam two want to embody certain moral called it strong inner charitable come have a solid sense of right and wrong dont do good by to be good. Adam one wants to conquer the world, adam two wants to of its calling. Adamonis asked how things subsist. Adam two s. Why things exist in with ultimate we are here for than 100 so his point is these sometimes live in confrontation with each other. We do live in a culture that supports adam one and sometimes ignores adam two. I would add in the people condition understand that adam one and adam two operate by different logic. Adam one operated by an economic logic which is straightforward. Leads to reward. Adam two list by inverse logic more logic and not an economic one and it is filled with conversion certificate received, surrender some at such as updating strength within yourself conquer desired success can lead to the greatest failure. That it can lead success which is humility in learning. To fulfill yourself if you forget yourself. In order to find yourself yet to lose yourself. His point is just to balance these two things. We live in a culture where it is so competitive, where the noise of mutation, silence is drowned out, still a silent voice inside. The meritocracy want you to be big budgets off, promote yourself, getting the next opportunity. Social media want you to be broadcasting itself to create a highlight reel i thought. With a philosophy that is prominent today that theres a golden egg inside where we are good and we need to trust that golden figure. So the Commencement Speakers say trust yourself, follow your compassion spirit to separate it all the time. In 1950, the Gallup Organization had a poll question about your students, are you a very important person . 12 said yes, im a very important person. It asked the same question can in 2005 and it wasnt 12 . It was 80 who said that. Everything called narcissus. Thats what ask people to read a bunch of statements, this is a blog you . Statements like id like to be said of attention. I find it easy to make a people because of so extraordinary. [laughter] in a meeting narcissism scores of current 30 in the last 20 years. Along with that has gone up increased desire for fame. High School Students were asked would you rather be or Junior High School sons were asked which of the day celebrities personal assistant, Justin Biebers president and personal assistant or president of harvard. By three to one they would want to be Justin Biebers assistant. To be fair, i would rather be president of harvard and Justin Biebers assistant. [laughter] coalition for as wouldve i believe a life with a lot thing or a lot of sex. By to the one they chose a life of fame. Psycho to College Campus and say im a columnist in your times im kind of famous. Go with the sex, its better. [laughter] [applause] but if you are only adam one, you turn into a shrewd animal. If thats all you have you like the quality of inner depth, you are not able to speak well. Deliver the a border and not attached to things that are most important in life. Thats been true in times of my life that you receive the gift of what life is going to offer but you settle for mediocrity courageous of unforgiving curve for people like me, im not hurting anybody, but a core piece of itself is turning into a less than you originally hoped. A gap opens up between your actual self and your desired self. So i spent four years trying to figure out that in her life, sense of being unworthy of the gift one has received. Howd you get that lex had to become a little more worthy . And itll can only get you so much. Reading and writing a book cant get you there but it can hopefully provide with it. I got an email from a guy who is a veterinarian who reminded me of the fact that it is also much you can teach inward. He wrote what a wise person teaches is the smallest part of what they give. So to those of their life, the way to go about it into smaller details is what is transmitted. Never forget that the message is the person. Perfected over lifetimes of efforts that were set in motion by yet another wise person hidden from the recipient in the dimness of time. Life is much bigger than we we think. Causeandeffect intertwined in a vast moral structure that keeps pushing us to do better, become better, even when we dwell in the most painful and confused darkness. The message that the person was the least of that which he gives. So i was looking for people. I was looking for friends. I was looking for dead friends who have left us a legacy of their lives to serve as examples of how to be better. One of his friends was a woman named Ida Eisenhower pictures born in 1862 in shenandoah virginia. Her mom died when she was five. Her father died when she was 11. She became an indentured servant, and when failure was out one day she just put. She comes up in high school got into a caravan trade to kansas got herself university, married a guy named david eyes out and gave birth to six sons one of whom was named Dwight Eisenhower. When Dwight Eisenhower was nine he wanted to go trickortreating. She said you were too young. Dwight eisenhower had a temper tantrum right there on the front yard and punched the yard and punched the tree and he punched its about he rubbed all the skin off his knuckles. She said into his room, had him inquired for an hour and came up to bind his went every saturday first. Ego congress own cell is greater than he who takes the city. Many decades later i saw said that was the most important conversation of his life because it taught him that he had a weakness to himself that he needed to be. He was a man of anger and test justice, ma he addressed his own sin indicated his own sin over the course of his life. During world war ii he would lie awake but he said i cannot let temper beat me and he developed a whole series of strategies to defeat this sin. Some of them were stupid. He would take people he hated ripening on a piece of paper over and over again rip it up and throw it in a garbage can. Thomas merton wrote that sold like athletes. They need opponents worthy of a method to be tried and extended and pushed to the limits of their power. What ida and white teachers is important for locating your course income identifying the activities to which it leads to things which were ashamed of and defending and beating an understanding first that you do have a course but thats a different i acquired i had longer before samuel johnson, he was will bore in 1709. He was born in england. Barely survived his birth. He was handed over to a wetnurse is no infected him with tuberculosis leaving him blind in one eye and deaf in one day. Develop smallpox. They perform search on his job which left scars on his face. He developed but we think its tourettes syndrome and lcv. He was twisting and what about any field assisted, felt as a teacher. His life at age 30 is what he said and what he called radically wretched. Suicide attempts. It was a very unsuccessful life. And out of that suffering but he turned that something into something. The first thing something does and should be said theres nothing intrinsically noble about suffering, but as a drag to keep her into yourself commit direction beneath the the daily cares of life and reminds you youre who you thought you were. What something does is i basement of your cell and then carved through the floor we get a cavity below revealing a cavity below. What something greater in johnson was a radical self honesty. And we think of you know the as thinking only of himself but my favorite definition of humility is radical selfawareness from a position of other centeredness. Radical selfawareness. And johnson achieve that. He walked to lunch and he started writing. This is what it does. He wrote his way to goodness. He developed a Firm Understanding of the world just by taking each of these weaknesses and writing about them. He couldnt control his own body but he needed to control his own mind by anchoring it in the reality of the truth. And so he wrote about sloth envy. He had a radical curiosity if someone told him there was a river in october people were to jump right into the river to see what it was like the somebody told him if he stuck to balls and a musket and shoot it will explode, so he stuck seven balls and shove it against the wall. Is the subject of his essays were the things that plague him sloth, envy guilt boredom sorrow, and he grabbed the impeachment hand and over the course of that as one blogger wrote the eye and entered his cell. He created an amazing worth it work ethic. He would write for friends, a friend of his was given a lectureship of oxford. His friend knew no law, so johnson said i would write the lectures for you. He wrote 1600 pages of text for free for his friends. Between 6872 he wrote the lives of the poet duty to blog this containing 370,000 words. This hunger to express. He had a great social club edmund burke come at us that but it also had his home, kept them straight. People that know what else ago former prostitutes slaves a doctor with no money, 13 People Living with him at a time. There was a large in us to him generosity of spirit. When he died one of his colleagues wrote come he has made a chasm which not only nothing can fill up but which nothing has a tendency to fill a. Johnson is dead. Let this go with the next best. There is nobody, no man can be said to be quicker of mind and johnson. So from johnson we learned how to turn suffering into self understanding and the importance of radical curiosity and the intellectual effort and the way of intellectual effort rule 22 moral goodness. The third friend i met with a woman in dorothy day. Dorothy day is admitting it was the sort of person you can just read the novel. She inhabited the novel and became like the characters of the novel. And unfortunate she read a lot of [laughter] and so she took to drinking carousing, live in living in poverty, sleeping around, a couple of of abortions, one that uses itunes, a very disorganized life. She was arrested, wrongfully arrested but she took it as an indictment, as a judgment on her own disorganized life. Amazing capacity for selfcriticism. She couldnt get out of it. She had a child out of wedlock and she decided that all the accounts of childbirth should of read were written by men. So she decided she would write wonder she wrote one, 40 minutes after giving birth and is very dramatic that it climaxes with a beautiful scene. She wrote, if i had written the greatest book composed the greatest symphony, painted the most pitiful painted or carved the most exquisite figure i could not have felt the more exalted greater than when they placed my job and my arms. No creature can contain the best of all as i thought after the birth of my child. And with this came the need to worship and to adore. And again unmerited love. That worship adoration, my friend says when you love, love is always in motion. It went to a job administered upward. She formed a catholic worker. She formed communes homeless shelters not only serving the poor but living with the poor and embracing poverty. It was the love that bled out into the community. Her example teaches us that valley of selfcriticism and also the valley of love and the service of the community. And so these are all some of the friends that you learn from. The fourth one i would think is a great novelist george eliot. Like the others she had a very bad childhood. She was the sort of christian who didnt get much love from her mother and therefore, she wa