Stephen L. Carter advocates the sturdy ancient virtue of integrity in this well argued volume. The author of The Culture of Disbelief, who is a law professor at Yale University, notes at the outset: "A person of integrity works somewhere inside each of us: a person we feel we can trust to do right, to play by the rules, to keep commitments."

In these times of ethical disarray, obstacles to an integral existence include a lack of moral reflectiveness, the desire to conform, and cheating. Carter finds scant evidence of this virtue in our private and public lives as he reflects upon marriage, sports, journalism, the media, and education. Integrity makes a good case for a revival of ethical discernment and action.