Book description
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Medelson gives clear-sighted descriptions, free of ideology, of what
morality really is, tracing it to its psychological roots, and of the
antimoralism behind familiar cultural tics like authoritarianism, the
culture of "cool," irrationalist movements in politics and
religion, and the sterility of academic attempts to understand the moral
life. Along the way, she gives a clear, persuasive explanation of why
moral truth exists and why believing this doesn't force us to be
dogmatic and judgmental. Mendelson's book is a bracing polemic, but it
is also inspiring and, with its eye-opening analysis of the moral
mentality, an education in what it means to be moral in an antimoral
world. I>is an engaging, reasoned look at American values: how the
angry political right hijacks and corrupts ideas about morality, how the
fringe political left abandons the moral outlook, and how antimoralism
from many sources results in cruelty, harsh law, dangerous
irrationality, corrupt religion, greed, and gross inequality, and
undermines American democracy. Cheryl Mendelson reminds us how far these
trends have taken us from our roots, and how a humane democracy, with
its freedoms, depends on the moral sense of its citizens.
The Good Life < QUOTES for Home Comforts: Mesmerizing -- and, in
its own way, revolutionary Chicago Sun-Times An extraordinary
achievement that has no peer in this century and may well have none in
the next Newsweek The bible of good housekeeping People Home Comforts is
to the house what Joy of Cooking is to food USA Today I couldn't put it
down. Cynthia Crossen, Wall Street Journal >
Medelson gives clear-sighted descriptions, free of ideology, of what
morality really is, tracing it to its psychological roots, and of the
antimoralism behind familiar cultural tics like authoritarianism, the
culture of "cool," irrationalist movements in politics and
religion, and the sterility of academic attempts to understand the moral
life. Along the way, she gives a clear, persuasive explanation of why
moral truth exists and why believing this doesn't force us to be
dogmatic and judgmental. Mendelson's book is a bracing polemic, but it
is also inspiring and, with its eye-opening analysis of the moral
mentality, an education in what it means to be moral in an antimoral
world. I>is an engaging, reasoned look at American values: how the
angry political right hijacks and corrupts ideas about morality, how the
fringe political left abandons the moral outlook, and how antimoralism
from many sources results in cruelty, harsh law, dangerous
irrationality, corrupt religion, greed, and gross inequality, and
undermines American democracy. Cheryl Mendelson reminds us how far these
trends have taken us from our roots, and how a humane democracy, with
its freedoms, depends on the moral sense of its citizens.
The Good Life <
