Chris Hedges was a foreign correspondent for nearly two decades who received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. He is the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, and teaches in the Program for American Studies at Princeton.

As a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and the son of a Presbyterian minister, Hedges is well equipped to conduct this wide-ranging interpretation of the Ten Commandments and the role of morality in contemporary America. He believes that these rules and guidelines help us to curb our worst instincts and to live together in community. Hedges uses illustrative material from his own days in seminary while living in a ghetto, from a woman obsessed with a jam rock band, from undocumented workers, and from a stock market reporter caught up in an insider trading scheme to probe the multileveled meanings of the commandments. Each chapter deals with a commandment (mystery, idols, lying, the Sabbath, murder, adultery, theft, envy, and greed).

There have been many books on honoring the Sabbath but Hedges is one of the first that covers this commandment from the following perspective: "I see now that we never celebrated the Sabbath. The Sabbath is about honoring those we love and those who love us, honoring the essence of the divine. By turning away from work, from the world, to cherish those we love, we honor the Sabbath. The Sabbath is not about one day. It is about taking time for a daughter's basketball game, a son's track race, a dinner where a family talks. The Sabbath is the time set aside to nurture all that gives us meaning in life, all that makes life worth living. The Sabbath is the recognition that work, that all the hours we spend making a living, are in fact the means to this end, to the ability to have and sustain love. When we ignore the Sabbath we destroy that which we should be working to achieve." He makes some cogent observations on religious institutions that support war, lies that lead to cynicism, courage as a primary virtue, and the promise of quick, easy shortcuts to individual greatness. Hedges does a good job with a well-tread subject and manages to let light in from several directions. Best of all is his proposition that the Ten Commandments lead us to love.