Curio (noun) a rare, unusual, or intriguing object

Sunday, May 31, 2020

"The Second Mountain"

The second mountain from
the left...no, that one.


David Brooks1 came to town last May to promote "The Second Mountain," his most recent book. I'd actually been to a book talk of his several years ago when "The Road to Character" came out and thought about picking up a signed copy, but the line was sufficiently long and the hour sufficiently late that I decided not to. This time it was a morning talk, so no such concerns!

Brooks can be quite funny. One of my favorite moments was when he told the story of being taken to Central Park when he was a child for a be-in (i.e. a time and place the hippies would go to "be"). Someone set a garbage can on fire and the crowd was throwing their wallets into it to demonstrate how little they cared about material things. The five-year-old Brooks saw a five dollar bill beginning to smolder so he broke through the crowd, reached in, grabbed it, and ran away –  "and that was my first step toward conservatism."

How about the book?