The Good Life: The Moral Individual in an Antimoral World

Description

The Good Life is a deeply reasoned but entertaining polemic about how the notion of morality has been co-opted by the political right, as the culture increasingly embraces the shallow charms of celebrity, gives a pass when it comes to failings in the realm of marital fidelity, and lives comfortably with the notion that we are all driven, more or less, by greed and the desire for power over others. Mendelson, who is for gay rights, sexual equality, labor unions, and the strong regulation of business and finance, is decidedly conservative when it comes to personal morality. She believes that while the right manages to effectively portray its opponents as socialist slackers, it claims a moral superiority it doesn't at all exhibit, lacking, as she says, moral compassion, one of the essential moral virtues. Provocative, inspiring, and deeply grounded, The Good Life shows that while the moral life is a hard road, the more of us who recognize that it is out there to be attempted, the better our culture will be.

Cheryl Mendelson is the author of the bestselling Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, as well as three novels. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She has practiced law in New York City and teaches philosophy at Barnard College. Her next book, on the subject of marriage, is to be published by Bloomsbury in 2013. She lives in New York City with her husband and son.

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 *