Essential Books That Liberate the Mind

It’s no secret that young men are sort of unwell.

They are four times more likely to kill themselves, three times more likely to struggle with addiction, and 12 times more likely to be incarcerated than women. If that weren’t enough, record numbers of men are not getting married, not dating, not enrolling in school or working, and struggling with serious mental health issues.

In response, a cottage industry has emerged—full of influencers and paid courses claiming to teach young men how to become “high value.”

But there seems to be a deeper intractable challenge: Young people lack meaning. Fifty-eight percent of young adults say they’ve experienced little or no sense of purpose in their lives over the past month.

Shilo Brooks has a simple idea for all of it. He’s telling young men—and really, all young people—to read. Yes, read. The idea is simple: Reading great books can make stronger and better men.

He knows he’s facing an uphill battle: Reading for pleasure among American adults has dropped 40 percent in the past 20 years. In 2022, only 28 percent of men read a fiction book, compared to 47 percent of women—a 19-point gap. 

Shilo doesn’t have the stereotypical profile for a “lit boy,” as Gen Z might describe him. He’s from a small town in Texas and has a thick Southern drawl. When he was a baby, his stepfather stole his mother’s savings, leaving them with nothing. And he almost didn’t go to college because he couldn’t afford it. 

But today, Shilo is president and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and Professor of Practice in the Department of Political Science at Southern Methodist University. He has also taught at Princeton, the University of Virginia, the University of Colorado, and Bowdoin College. 

His prescription is simple. Shilo says: “Great works of literature are entertaining, but they are not mere entertainment. A great book induces self-examination and spiritual expansion. When a man is starved for love, work, purpose, money, or vitality, a novel wrestling with these themes can be metabolized as energy for the heart. When a man suffers from addiction, divorce, self-loathing, or vanity, his local bookstore can become his pharmacy.”

This is the driving vision of the new podcast he just launched with The Free Press, called Old School, where he talks to guests about the books that shaped their lives: Fareed Zakaria on The Great Gatsby, Nick Cave on The Adventures of Pinocchio, Richard Dawkins on P.G. Wodehouse novels. Then there’s Coleman Hughes, Ryan Holiday, Rob Henderson, and so much more. Think of it like a boy’s book club that anyone can enjoy.

So, here’s what you’ll hear today: a conversation between Bari and Shilo about this project, and how it fulfills the desperate needs of a lost generation.

Subscribe to Old School with Shilo Brooks.

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