James Q. Wilson has taken an unfashionable but undeniably crucial
question about moral nature and produced a bracing, elegant, carefully researched and
closely argued controversy. Everyone should read it. Michael Crichton

Wilson admits in the preface of his book that virtue has acquired a bad name. However,
people make some kind of reference to morality whenever they discuss whether or not
someone is nice, dependable, or decent; whether they have a good character; and the aspects
of friendship, loyalty, and moderation that are all informed by morality. Although we may
disguise this language of morality as a language of personality, it is, in Wilsons words, the
language of virtue and vice, which he uncovers in his book. He goes on to say, This book
is not an effort to state or justify moral rules; that is, it is not a book of philosophy. Rather, it is
an effort to clarify what ordinary people mean when they speak of their moral feelings and to
explain, insofar as one can, the origins of those feelings.

With this book James Q. Wilson rescues morality from the hype and carping of partisan
interests. Focusing on our shared moral sensibilities and the basic human realities and experiences
that shape them, he provides terms by which people of widely divergent perspectives can address
common problems anew. The Moral Sense makes a singularand for our generation, decisively
importantcontribution."James Davison Hunter, author of Culture Wars

Nadia May has been nominated as an AudioFile Golden Voice five years running and is a winner of thirteen AudioFile Earphones Awards. She is the co-founder of TheatreFirst, a theater company in the San Francisco Bay Area where she currently lives.