Sample Summary

David Brooks's "The Modesty Manifesto" appeared in the online New York Times on March 10, 2011.  In the article, Brooks asserts that the people of the United States are arrogant in comparison to their predecessors, and he posits that it is that increased self-satisfaction that has led to the escalation of a number of economic, political, and social ills.  He employs anecdotal and seeming statistical evidence to support his point, although he does not provide much context for his "more scientific" information.  Even so, he does an admirable job of connecting what he evidently perceives as poor behavior to larger social tendencies that can easily be taken as problematic.