The Social Animal (Brooks book)

Brooks spent close to three years writing the book in between moments of his media career, such as TV appearances and lectures. He has remarked, "I used to play golf... I gave up every second that I wasn't hanging around with my wife and kids." In doing research, he visited the lab of neuro-scientist Antonio Damasio at the University of Southern California (USC). Brooks's distance from his friends and colleagues living in Washington, D.C., which he has called "the most emotionally avoidant city in America", provided a major inspiration for writing the book. He has also remarked, "Our explanation of why we live the way we do is all on the surface... Our policies have been shaped by shallow views of human nature." ==Contents==

Brooks writes that people's subconscious minds largely determine who they are and how they behave. He argues that deep internal emotions, the "mental sensations that happen to us", establish the outward mindset that makes decisions such as career choices. Brooks describes the human brain as dependent on what he calls "scouts" running through a deeply complex neuronal network. Ultimately, Brooks depicts human beings as driven by the universal feelings of loneliness and the need to belong—what he labels "the urge to merge". He describes people going through "the loneliness loop" of internal isolation, engagement, and then isolation again. He states that people feel the continual need to be understood by others. Brooks devises two fictional characters, Harold and Erica, that he follows from around conception to natural death. Harold goes through life with a somewhat passive, pedestrian attitude as an intelligent student, a historical-themed author, and later as a fellow at a Washington, D.C. think tank. Erica has a more focused and driven attitude that leads her to overcome the failure of her start-up consulting business to become the CEO of a major cable corporation and eventually ascend to the position of (fictional) President Richard Grace's Deputy Chief of Staff and then Commerce Secretary. ==Reviews==

On the weekend of the book's publication, The New York Times Book Review published a review written by philosophy and law professor Thomas Nagel. Nagel criticized Brooks's use of fictional characters in pursuit of his central thesis, writing, {{quote|The book is really a moral and social tract, but Brooks has hung it on the life stories of two imaginary people, Harold and Erica, who are used to illustrate his theory in detail and to provide the occasion for countless references to the psychological literature and frequent disquisitions on human nature and society... This device is supposed to relieve the tedium of what would otherwise be like skimming through 10 years' worth of the Tuesday Science Times. But fiction is not Brooks's métier, and he lacks the ability to create characters that compel belief. Newsweek ran a review by James Atlas praising the book as "authoritative, impressively learned, and vast in scope", and he also remarked: Alan Wolfe wrote a mixed review in The New Republic. He stated that Brooks is a "skillful popularizer of academic research in a wide variety of fields" and that Brooks "has a knack... to find experiments that, in his view, are chock full of revelations about the ways we live now." Wolfe also accused Brooks of cherry-picking facts to suit a given narrative about human nature. Wolf described The Social Animal as "a book by a conservative in which science is being used to buttress a prior point of view." Walter Isaacson, author and CEO of the Aspen Institute, praised the book as "an absolutely fascinating book about how we form our emotions and character." Kirkus Reviews referred to it as "An uncommonly brilliant blend of sociology, intellect and allegory." Tony Schwartz praised The Social Animal in the Harvard Business Review, finding in it "a path to a more meaningful life—one that balances action with introspection, confidence with restraint." ==Reception==

The book reached the No. 3 spot on the Publishers Weekly best-sellers list for non-fiction (as of April 3, 2011). Brooks told Newsweek that he felt surprised by the large audience interest in his book tour, such as a woman screaming "Will you marry me?" in Aspen Institute as well as people at Random House hugging him in their office corridors. The book made a deep impression upon the British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader at the time, David Cameron. Cameron instructed all members of his Cabinet to read the book. He created a seminar at 10 Downing Street so that Brooks, while promoting the book in the UK, could speak directly to the Minister and his closest advisers. Cameron's media advisers in particular felt impressed by Brooks's discussions with them. ==See also==