The importance of honor is present in the earliest records of civilization. Today, while it may still be an essential concept in Islamic cultures, in the West, honor has been disparaged and dismissed as obsolete. In this lively and authoritative book, James Bowman traces the curious and fascinating history of this ideal, from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment and to the killing fields of World War I and the despair of Vietnam. Bowman reminds us that the fate of honor and the fate of morality and even manners are deeply interrelated. His book is an indispensable document in a time of growing concern about the erosion of values.
“What an engaging book James Bowman has written, and what a daunting command he has of his material. Ranging across psychology, popular culture, military history, the arts, and politics, Honor is a tapestry of the 20th century that uses a neglected thread-the evolution of the complicated bundle of values that goes into the concept of honor-to explain how our culture got where it is today. Honor gives that rarest of gifts: a new, powerful way of thinking about a familiar history”
— Charles Murray, author of Losing Ground
“James Bowman has written a profound and important book, at once fascinating and alarming, on the changing fortunes of the idea of ‘honor’ in America and the West. Faced with the energy and the implacable hatred of the barbaric version of honor in radical Islam, our long-term survival may well depend on the reinvention of a form of honor suitable to free and democratic societies.”
— Robert Bork, author of The Tempting of America
“What an engaging book James Bowman has written, and what a daunting command he has of his material. Ranging across psychology, popular culture, military history, the arts, and politics, Honor: A History is a tapestry of the twentieth century that uses a neglected thread—the evolution of the complicated bundle of values that goes into the concept of honor—to explain how our culture got where it is today. Honor gives that rarest of gifts: a new, powerful way of thinking about a familiar history.”
— Charles Murray, author of Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences
“You will gain a new insight on the first page of this book, and on the last, and there are fireworks all the way through, again and again. A real education, on a subtle topic—on a topic of unheard-of, silent, horizon-shifting importance, like the shifting of the earth deep below the surface.”
— Michael Novak, author of On Two Wings
