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Civility
by: Stephen L. Carter

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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 321.8
EAN: 9780060977597
ISBN: 0060977590
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: April 01, 1999
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: March 03, 1999
Studio: Harper Perennial
Sales Rank: 359593

Related Items:

Choosing Civility: The Twenty-five Rules of Considerate Conduct

God's Name in Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics

Editorial Review:

Product Description:
The acclaimed author of "The Culture of Disbelief" proves to readers that manners matter to the future of America.

Amazon.com Review:
In this followup to Integrity, Yale law professor Stephen Carter continues to meditate upon the "prepolitical" qualities on which a healthy society is based.

Why do people show poorer manners today than in previous ages? How did we come to confuse rudeness with self-expression and acting on our "rights"? Carter looks at these and other important questions with a combination of his personal experiences and an extremely long shelf of reading material, all the while maintaining an informal writing style that continually--but politely--engages the reader, inviting him or her to think about these issues along with Carter.

There are important messages here about generosity and trust, about respecting diversity and dissent, and about resolving conflict through dialogue rather than mandate. Stephen Carter would never be so uncivil as to demand your attention, but Civility most definitely compels.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Excellent review of "good behavior"
Civility

This book is not a book of etiquette. It is an historical review, leading to how personal behavior affects our society. It is not a "feel-good" book about success or personal growth. It is spiritually aligned within the Judeo-Christian tradition, and makes a solid contribution in proposing the need of this influence in our society. It is a classic of contemporary thought, and could well be a textbook in a class on ethics in a Christian college. The actual issues of ethics (doing good) are thoroughly explained here. Highly recommended.

Rating:

- America's Uncivil Wars continue On the Home Front.
With today's busy vehicles everywhere, pedestrians beware. Many are killed by hasty, untrained drivers and nothing is done. Only on occasion, if the killer runs, he may be charged with manslaughter, but this is the exception to the fule, not the norm. America has become an ill-mannered watershed of rudeness, both behind the wheel and just walking in the crowded malls. We are headed toward a social breakdown.

Does language really matter? An arm thrust up in the air (body language) is considered a vulgar hand signal. Nowadays, you can't even wave at someone. There is a strong anything-goes ethic, and will eventually erode into total chaosand anarchy. Trash talk and head butts are the idiom of sports, as the participants take out their hatred and disrespect on whoever gets ... Read More

Rating:

- An excellent read
This book's topic is as simple as it's title, but this is a good thing. The theme of this book is the lack of civility in the modern world, and how to fix this problem. The answer he suggests is a return to our religious values. This is applicable not only to those of us who are Christian, or even to those of us who believe in God, but rather to all, because the basic assumptions such as the dignity of human life is farily starightforward. If more people would heed his advice, the world would be a much better place.

Rating:

- Preachy - but then again, is that a bad thing?
I must confess that when I see books like this, I have a tendency to cringe. Most books on civility are 'how to' manuals written by self-styled morally superior curmugeons who want us all to live as they do.

Then again, I though to myself while in the bookstore debating on what to procure, isn't it about time that someone writes an honest, frank book about how to be civil, particularly in the civil arena? After all, democratic politics thrives when discussion, self-government, and liberty without license are at high levels and in case anyone has cared to notice, all are at levels approching an all time low.

So I bought it and my judgement was correct. Professor Carter is not on a high horse, he does not condescend and his comments and observations are astute and ... Read More

Rating:

- Carter's Civility comes at the cost of diversity.
Carter's premise seems valid at first. After all, who hasn't noticed that people seem to be getting more uncivilized in our society? We have increased cases of road rage, clerks at stores ignore us and are impolite, and the moral fabric of America is decaying. This is the accepted view that Carter reemphasizes in this book.

He makes it very clear that he values the moral consensus we seemed to have in the 50's (However with Carter having been born in `54 it is unclear how he knows exactly what that consensus was) and while he makes passing note of the problems of the fifties such as racism and sexism he still wishes to have some sort of return to the values of the fifties while retaining the freedoms of today's world.

What Carter fails to realize is that the moral consensus ... Read More

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