Beginners

The bestselling author of Traffic and You May Also Like takes us on an insightful, joyful tour of the transformative powers of starting something new, no matter your age.

Noticing his daughter's insatiable curiosity about the world, Tom Vanderbilt asked himself why so many of us stop learning new skills as adults. Old dogs can't learn new tricks, or so the saying goes, but Vanderbilt wanted to fight the rut of mid-career competence and decided to embark upon a year of learning purely for the sake of learning. Rapturously singing Spice Girls in an amateur choir, losing chess matches to kids still learning to tie their shoes, and dodging scorpions at a surf camp in Costa Rica, Vanderbilt weaves his own experience with comprehensive, insightful research, and finds that the circuitous path it takes to learn new skills takes us on an unexpected journey of self-discovery and fulfillment. Building on his personal insight from his year of learning dangerously with engaging and instructive studies, Vanderbilt shows how anyone can get better at beginning again--and, more importantly, why we should take those awkward first steps. At its heart, Beginners inspires us to take small acts of reinvention, and rediscover the magic of learning.