The Road to Character

[Brooks] emerges as a countercultural leader . . . The literary achievement of The Road to Character is inseparable from the virtues of its author . . . The highlight of the material is the quality of the author's moral and spiritual judgments

Michael Gerson, Washington Post

A hyper-readable, lucid, often richly detailed human story . . . In the age of the selfie, Brooks wishes to exhort us back to a semiclassical sense of self-restraint, self-erasure and self-suspicion

New York Times Book Review

Everyone concerned about the good life should read this book

Tim Montgomerie, The Times

A powerful, haunting book that works its way beneath your skin . . . worth logging off Facebook to read it

Oliver Burkeman, Guardian

Profound and eloquent . . . written with moral urgency and philosophical elegance

Andrew Solomon, author of 'Far From the Tree'

The Road to Character feels particularly pertinent to some immediate issues right now: the level of public cynicism about politicians and "experts", witnessed in the catastrophic EU referendum, or the bland managerialism that is replacing discussion about the core values of our educational system

Rowan Williams, New Statesman