Social Animal (Brooks) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
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.... One doesn’t care what happens to them because in spite of Brooks’s earnest attempt to describe their psychological depths, they do not come to life; they and their supporting cast are mannequins for the display of psychological and social generalizations.
Thomas Nagel - New York Times Book Review


[S]harp, clear and often very funny.... Many of us, Brooks believes, are in the grip of an outdated theory of human nature. We give priority to cold-blooded reason, to deliberative, conscious, logical and linear thought...but] Brain research, Brooks tells us, "reminds us of the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, character over IQ." Brooks is right that many psychologists, philosophers and neuroscientists believe this to be true. The Social Animal is a savvy, accessible and enthusiastic defense of their position—they are lucky to have him on their side.
Paul Bloom - Washington Post


Mr. Brooks is at his best as a social observer, documenting the changing patterns of contemporary life.... he shows genius in sketching archetypes and coining phrases. Here we learn of the "composure class" (who earn their money "by climbing the meritocratic ladder of success").... There is plenty of Mr. Brooks's vintage comic sociology here, too...[b]ut Mr. Brooks is after much more than witty aperçus about life's winners. He wants to explain what makes the "composure class" tick.
Chistopher F. Chabris - Wall Street Journal


The Social Animal is an odd beast of a book with a slightly arbitrary quality. It is never quite clear on what grounds Brooks has decided to explore the implications of some new ideas and not others, other than that they confirm his own views and can be worked into his narrative. Indeed, his rather casual use of academic research sits strangely with his avowed respect for science. There are other tensions. Brooks is impressed by the evidence marshalled in Wilkinson and Pickett's The Spirit Level, and elsewhere, that "the mere fact of being low on the status totem pole brings its own deep stress and imposes its own psychic costs". Yet he remains an almost unqualified meritocrat, arguing that the great challenge for government is not to promote greater equality but to make it easier for people to rise from one class to another.
Ben Rogers - Guardian (UK)


New York Times columnist Brooks (Bobos in Paradise) raids Malcolm Gladwell's pop psychology turf in a wobbly treatise on brain science, human nature, and public policy. Essentially a satirical novel interleaved with disquisitions on mirror neurons and behavioral economics, the narrative chronicles the life cycle of a fictional couple—Harold, a historian working at a think tank, and Erica, a Chinese-Chicana cable-TV executive—as a case study of the nonrational roots of social behaviors, from mating and shopping to voting. Their story lets Brooks mock the affluent and trendy while advancing soft neoconservative themes: that genetically ingrained emotions and biases trump reason; that social problems require cultural remedies (charter schools, not welfare payments); that the class divide is about intelligence, deportment, and taste, not money or power. Brooks is an engaging guide to the "cognitive revolution" in psychology, but what he shows us amounts mainly to restating platitudes. (Women like men with money, we learn, while men like women with breasts.) His attempt to inflate recent research on neural mechanisms into a grand worldview yields little except buzz concepts—"society is a layering of networks"—no more persuasive than the rationalist dogmas he derides.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) An uncommonly brilliant blend of sociology, intellect and allegory.
Kirkus Reviews