freakonomics and super freakonomics

The subtitle of Freakonomics, “a rogue econnomist explores the hidden side of everything,” reveals the ambitious of authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. The subtitle of the sequel, Super Freakonomics, “global cooling, patriotic prostitues, and why suicide bombers should buy life insurance,” gives a further sense of the breadth of their desire to study, understand, and explain. With dogged persistence, they dig up data and use the tools of economics to analyze it, looking for the the curious, the unexpected, and, at times, the controversial. Frequently they put the lie to ideas that are common in our culture — they find, for example, that car seats for children over 2 years old are not more effective at preventing serious injury than the regular seat belts in our cars. Levitt, an award winning professor of economics, is especially adept at finding proxy variables to study questions that aren’t easily answered directly.

You’ll enjoy the books for their statistical analysis and their cheeky tone.

the boy who was raised as a dog

Stress is good for humans. It helps us grow and develop, get stronger and adapt in ways we never would be able to without it. Most of us experience healthy stress throughout our lives: dealing with parents and siblings; navigating school; dating; serious relationships—all these and more are sometimes painful, but always rich, opportunities to realize our full potentials.

Of course, stress can also harm if it is too intense or if we don’t have the capacity and/or support to deal with the level of stress with which we are faced. Children who are abused or neglected or who witness violent crimes are often overwhelmed and unable to process the trauma. The results are dramatic, especially if the trauma occurs in the first few years of life, because crucial cognitive and psychological growth can be interrupted causing serious gaps in brain development. It is a testament to the human animal’s resilience that such damage is mostly reparable—but only if the child is treated appropriately within the structure of a loving, stable home and a knowledgeable therapeutic environment.

Bruce D. Perry is a therapist and researcher who can provide the appropriate therapies and he has done so for many children. From sexual abuse, to profound neglect, to former Branch Davidians, Perry has worked with a lot of kids and has collected some of the stories in a book, The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love and Healing (2007), written with journalist and science writer, Maia Szalavitz. Along the way, Perry educates us about trauma, its effects on children, and what he and his team have learned about successful intervention.

Reading this book as a teacher thinking about the trauma that my students may have endured before they came to my classroom gave me pause. If they have undergone such stresses, then helping them to learn means helping them deal with all that. It also means acknowledging that students’ reactions to what seem like an ordinary situations may not be at all ordinary to them because they trigger traumatic memories. Providing a consistent, caring environment for them becomes all the more important.

As teachers, we have to be careful not to approach our students from a deficit perspective. What students lack is less important than what they have, which is always more than we can know. At the same time, understanding some of the environmental stresses can help us deal with them. For me, Perry’s work provides some more understanding of the brain’s development and gives me yet another reason to meet my students where they are. If, sometimes, that means teaching fractions to Calculus students, so be it; if it means helping students over emotional blocks, that’s fine, too. I’m a teacher; I teach, doing whatever is needed to help my students toward their goals. This book helps me think about my work in new ways and for that I am grateful.

a different mirror

At this point in the development of our culture and its history, most college-educated folks, as well as many others, know that the white-washed, reductionist history we were taught in grade school is narrow and crafted to serve the ruling classes; white men dominate that history, despite the fact that people of color, the poor, women, and others had major impacts both on the stories we were told about our nation’s origins and, especially, on the stories we were not (usually) told. At the same time, our knowledge is frequently theoretical; that is, our concrete knowledge of the contributions made by non-white males is often limited.

Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (1993) is here to change that. Organized both chronologically and by ethnic group, the book is separated into chapters that tell a single group’s history and its effect in the U.S., including a wealth of quotes and information from original and secondary sources. Connected enough by unifying metaphors to read the work through from cover to cover, each chapter can also stand alone if your interest is more focused and less general.

Among many significant insights, Takaki’s analysis of the civil rights movement as emerging from the upheaval and opportunities during World War II surprised me, because I hadn’t heard it before, and rang true. Such analysis is helpful as we continue to see the results of these developments in our culture. The current backlash in our “post-feminist” and “post-racial” society, with its roots in the 1980s, is another attempt by those with privilege and power in our country to keep the rest of us from uniting for the good of the many, rather than the benefit of a few. Such moves started early in our history (e.g., when “race” was created to divide white indentured servants from black) and, as I’ve said, continue to this day.

Takaki’s book is a classic and deserves to be. When I saw him speak in 2007, his enthusiasm, erudition, and genius were obvious. His tragic death last year was a loss to us all.

covering

In Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights (2006), Kenji Yoshino uses “covering” to mean the opposite of flaunting. Covering is a wide array of behaviors by individuals in a society that attempt to hide the way those people don’t conform to the “mainstream” idea of what society considers “normal” human behavior. Covering is assimilation, an often useful action in a diverse society of people trying to get along with one another.

Yoshino frames covering as part of a spectrum of oppressive behavior by dominant cultural groups, a spectrum that starts with demands to “convert,” then to “pass,” and finally to “cover.” Focusing largely on gay and lesbian identity, Yoshino traces some of the history of demands to “covert” to heterosexuality, followed by the demand to “pass” as straight, and finally, the current requirement to cover, potently symbolized by the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the U.S. military. Converting is about actually becoming something different; the “converted” would actually stop being attracted to same-sex partners and be attracted exclusively to opposite-sex partners. Passing is less about actually changing your preferences; instead, it’s about pretending to be something you’re not; it’s a performance of heterosexuality. Covering is not a full on performance of straightness, but rather a not-flaunting of queerness. As I said above, covering is the opposite of flaunting.

The same spectrum of oppression works outside of hetero-normativity. For example, racial minorities in the U.S. have had a similar history, though of course passing is limited to those whose phenotype allows them to do so. Covering is much more pernicious. Witness the demand for African-American’s to wear their hair more like white or Asian hair, a demand that requires painful treatments, enormous amounts of money, and hours of regular maintenance. African-American women face especially stringent requirements for what hairstyles are acceptable, requirements that deny a rich cultural history and the physical nature of their hair. (If you haven’t seen Chris Rock’s documentary, Good Hair, on the subject, then check it out as soon as you can.) Essentially, our society asks black folks not to display their black hair, i.e., not to be so black.

As a straight, white male from an essentially middle-class background, I have to cover few, if any, of what U.S. culture considers major dimensions of identity to make myself seem “normal.” That doesn’t mean I don’t need to cover parts of myself. For a relatively mild example, I occasionally like to lick my plate, not wanting to waste the delicious sauce on the dish; however, I usually (but not always) restrain that urge in public because I don’t want people to think I’m completely uncouth or crazy. More seriously, I frequently hide my urge to cry in public. I also quite consciously dress to be taken seriously at my job, despite the fact that I would often be happier in other, less “acceptable” clothing.

I mention these examples not to trivialize the oppression that people of color, women, members of the LGBT community, and others experience, nor to make light of the strong demands that our culture makes on them to cover their individuality. Instead, I mean to emphasize that we are all required to cover in one way or another. Covering mutes our individuality by obscuring the idiosyncratic differences between us. And, as Yoshino acknowledges, this is often good because it helps the world run more smoothly. As long as people are given the choice to cover or not, Yoshino has no problem. What he objects to is forcing people to assimilate.

Yoshino’s discussion of covering is most poignant when most personal, when he describes his coming out as a gay man and then his struggle not to cover. His legal analysis brings out his training as a lawyer, which is good—and, as with much legalese, sometimes you wish he had said the same thing in a lot fewer words. At the same time, his experience as a poet and his general love of language make even the driest passages a relative joy to read. I’ve never read a more finely crafted piece of non-fiction. In this way, Yoshino is refusing to cover any of who he is—poet, lawyer, son-of-immigrants, gay man, and more—he flaunts it all. His final prediction, about the end of identity politics, seems overly optimistic, perhaps even naïve; but I believe he is true to his experience and to who he is throughout. That courage not to cover is rare and I, for one, appreciate it.

we real cool

In the preface to We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (2004), bell hooks notes that “there is not even a small body of anti-patriarchal literature speaking directly to black males about what they can do to educate themselves for critical consciousness, guiding them on the path of liberation.” hooks writes the book, then, “as a black woman who cares about the plight of black men. I feel I can no longer wait for brothers to take the lead and spread the word. I have spent ten years waiting. And in those years the suffering of black men has intensified. Writing this book I hope to add my voice to the small chorus of voices speaking out on behalf of black male liberation.”

I read the book, not because I’m a black man, but to think about my African-American male students and how to help them succeed in my classes; I knew hooks would provide incisive cultural observation and a hopeful, loving message. I also read because I could, in the future, have a bi-racial child who would be considered by many to be black. I feel the need to prepare. I wanted to think about it with something beyond my own brain and the influence of those around me.

When I expressed these sentiments to my old friend, John, a parent, he said that he couldn’t help me think about having bi-racial children, but nevertheless he thought the most important thing a parent can do for a child is be present for him or her. He said that that the complications I was considering might be good to be aware of, but that ultimately the most important thing is to love your children and show them that you do. hooks says pretty much the same thing. The book is pretty critical of black men and points to better parenting as part of the solution. I can be a part of that solution in that I can hold high expectations for my children and give them the support to achieve them. I can love them and demonstrate that love consistently. Hopefully, I can also model what it means to be a man in a way that does not perpetuate all of the racist, patriarchal injustice against which hooks rails.

outliers

Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell, 2008) is subtitled The Story of Success, because Gladwell sets out to look at successful people, how they achieved that success, and what factors outside their control helped (or hindered) them on the way to success. He looks at professional hockey players and other athletes. He looks at Bill Gates. He looks at school children and lawyers. From my perspective his conclusion is that every successful person has a series of advantages and/or opportunities that don’t come to most of us; there is some unearned, usually structural advantage—often several of advantages—that successful people have that the rest of us don’t. Therefore, Outliers is a thoroughgoing critique of idea that meritocracy exits.

For example, in Canada, where many professional hockey players grow up, children’s hockey is organized by age group. If you will be 12 during the calendar year, whether in January or June or December, you will play in the 12 year-old league. If you turn 12 in December, compared to children born in the first few months of the year, you will be 10 or 12 months behind in development. So, when it comes time to select the best of the 12 year-old league, you’ll be at a significant disadvantage, because you’re likely to be less physically developed than most of your peers. The best of any particular age group tend to get more playing time, more coaching, and just play more hockey. Thus, when you get to the 13 year-old league, not only are you behind your peers physically, but also in terms of experiencing and training. This gap widens at every age group—is it any surprise that most of the Canadian national hockey team is born in the first three months of the year? According to Gladwell, the great majority are.

This is a great illustration of an arbitrary advantage, given to some and not to others, that leads to the difference between success and failure at something, in this case hockey. Gladwell describes similar structural and systemic advantages and disadvantages in all kinds of situations until, after telling a story about a “brilliant immigrant kid [who] overcomes poverty and the Depression, can’t get a job at the stuffy downtown law firms, makes it on his own through sheer hustle and ability,” he says: “I hope by now that you are skeptical of this kind of story . . . . [S]uccess doesn’t happen that way. Successful people don’t do it alone. Where they come from matters. They’re products of particular places and environments.” Successful people are “a product of the world in which they grew up.

Gladwell goes further, explicitly critiquing the way our culture clings to “the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we chose to write as a society don’t matter at all,” thereby wasting huge a amount potential talent:

Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And, most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play—and by “we” I mean society—in determining who makes and who doesn’t.

Gladwell implicates us all. “To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success . . . with a society that provides opportunities for all. ”

Societal responsibility for helping our children succeed and for helping all people realize their potential is an important message. If Gladwell had left I there—pushing us to accept our responsibility and calling out to change the arbitrary nature of success in the current structures—the book would have been a useful and even profound call to improve education and opportunity for all.

Unfortunately, rather than change society to acknowledge the talent and skill of more of us, for Gladwell the solution seems to be to deny ones culture in the name of being successful by the standards of our current structures. Looking at Korean Air pilots and their historically disproportionately high crash rate, Gladwell literally argues that “to be a success at what they did, they had to shed some part of their own identity,” a deep respect for authority that he admits “runs throughout Korean culture.” Similarly, for Marita, a twelve year-old girl in a special school called KIPP (Knowledege is Power Program) in New York City. “[T]he cultural legacy she has been given does not match her circumstances . . . . Her community does not give her what she needs. So what does she have to do? Give up her evenings and weekend and friends—all the elements of her old world—and replace them with KIPP.” That is, Marita needs to give up her culture because her culture isn’t giving her “what she needs.”

This attitude is classic cultural deficit reasoning (see the work of Tara Yosso and my entry on a lecture she gave in San Francisco). The idea, often put forward by well-meaning liberals, is that the poor (usually non-white) unfortunates, who don’t have the advantages that middle-class white kids have, can be saved by assimilating, by learning and adopting white middle-class culture. That this ignores the strengths, abilities, intelligences, and experiences the rest of the world brings to every situation doesn’t seem to register. This perspective looks at what people don’t have (i.e., they don’t have middle-class white culture), rather than what they do have (i.e., cultures and practices and abilities all their own). It also ignores the racism, sexism, classism, and other oppression that people outside dominant groups endure and the way that identity is fundamentally shaped by those forces.

A much better approach would recognize that everyone comes with strengths and weaknesses and would celebrate the incredible diversity of our cultures and abilities. It would foster talents we currently don’t even call talents. Creating true opportunity for more people to be successful in our culture means acknowledging the wealth that all people bring to school and work and politics and life.

what’s the matter with kansas?: how conservatives won the heart of america

In 2004, it was easy to moan about how strong the neo-conservative movement in the United States was. The war against gay marriage, abortion, and other social/cultural issues was raging and the neo-cons seemed to be winning—witness the fact that George W. Bush was reelected that year on a platform that consisted of almost nothing except the failures of his first term and the idea that he was somehow of the common people.

This is exactly what journalist and writer Thomas Frank does in What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004), using his home state of Kansas as the poster child of confused, misguided voting in the U.S., voting by the poor and working class against their economic self-interest. His main questions: why, in Kansas (and, by extension, all over the country), would farmers, blue-collar workers, and poor people, in general—historically faithful Democratic voters—vote Republican, supporting the corporate takeover of their family farms, the Wal-Martizing of their local businesses, and the reduction of taxes for the wealthiest? Why would the people that need the most help getting by support reducing the amount of health care, education, and other public services?

The answer, unsurprising to those that have read George Lakoff, is values. Thomas makes the case that the neo-conservatives have used wedge issues social issues like abortion, gun control, and evolution/creationism—racial and xenophobic fear is notably absent from his list, but I would certainly add them—to polarize the traditionally Democratic base. The ironic thing about these reasons for voting Republican, as Thomas points out, is that little is ever actually accomplished on those issues. The neo-cons run on a platform of social outrage and moral uprightness, but spend their time in office busting unions, cutting taxes, deregulating industries, and gutting our public school system.

Thomas is a thorough researcher, but most of the book is an anecdotal rant, a head-shaking “can you believe this really happened?” What’s missing is the kind of organizing scheme that Lakoff provides, a lack that left me feeling little wiser after reading the book. Nevertheless, Thomas makes some important points. Primary among them: “Somewhere in the last four decades liberalism ceased to be relevant to huge portions of its traditional constituency, and we can say that liberalism lost places like Shawnee and Wichita with as much accuracy as we can point out that conservatism won them over.” The lack of clearly articulated progressive vision, combined with liberal politicians’ concessions to Wall Street and the rich, have impoverished the left and the country has paid the price with 8 years of neo-cons in the White House.

A year after Obama’s election, it feels like we’ve started to recover from those dark days. However, the economic policy debates are still largely framed like they have been since the 1980s. Progress on social issues, incremental as it is, is great, but does little, if anything, to change the economic conditions, distribute wealth and prosperity to all people, and improve health care and education. Only by reframing the issues so that most people see real change as beneficial to them and in line with their values can we move forward to create more justice and equity in our society.

the political mind

George Lakoff is a cognitive linguist at the University of California, Berkeley. He is working in a long tradition of scientists who use their knowledge and skills to understand the world we live in and to change the world for the better, as they understand “better”. His books, including The Political Mind (2008), are a part of that project. I admire him for trying and for the power of his work.

I used the phrase “as they understand ‘better’” advisedly. The history of scientists using science to improve the world has been good and bad. Science has been used to eliminate disease, make daily chores easier, and many other good ends; it has also been used—and still is—to further oppressions of all kinds, including racism, sexism, classism, and more.

This is not to say that I dispute Lakoff’s science or even his applications to the political world. In fact, I find the ideas compelling because they help me understand the world and the behavior of people around me. In addition, I like his goals and mostly align with his politics.

But agreeing with Lakoff’s picture of a better world—a picture he outlines in the book’s last chapter—is not important. The science underlying his method for changing the world is important and we should take notice. Lakoff calls that science the 21st century ideas of reason and cognition, which is somewhat self-serving considering that he helped develop the theory. Nevertheless, as I see it the big idea here is that the mind is fundamentally a metaphor instrument (and here we need to note that using the word “instrument” itself evokes a metaphor and one that I don’t think is entirely accurate—instrument implies a tool with a user, but the mind is part of the body and cannot be separated, so who or what would be the user of the “instrument”?). According to Lakoff (and others), we think in and reason with metaphors; every action, every perception, every idea is governed by one or more metaphors that are semi-hardwired in the physical space of our brains.

As I understand the story, our neurons physically form circuits or “frames” or metaphor themes. For example, take a basic action frame: Actor, Action, Acted On. This circuit in the brain is activated by pretty much every action. I could be the actor, writing the action, this blog entry the acted on. Or the actor could be you, reading the action, and still this blog entry the acted on. Every time the frame is activated these roles come into play; my mind is looking for who or what fits the roles. Then our brains take the idea of me—literally another circuit in my brain with an entire frame of associations and knowledge—and binds the actor role with me physically and temporarily.

The binding isn’t permanent, but the more an idea is bound to a role in a frame, the easier it is to do it again. If an idea or person is bound to a role often enough it becomes difficult to separate them because the physical connection between the two brain circuits is now hard to break. This explains, physically, why thinking of yourself as a being in control of your life promotes more of the same. Confidence leads to more confidence, because literally the circuitry that represents you in your brain gets bound in neurons to the circuitry that represents confidence. Of course, the opposite is also true.

This understanding of the brain’s function helps explain and supports lots of ideas about education. Metaphor binding means context is important, that attitude matters, that fun and enthusiasm matter, and that relationships between teachers and students make a difference. Teachers know all this, but now we have a more physical understanding of how it works.

The Political Mind is a deeper exploration and a more nuanced, less specifically political perspective on the ideas from Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant. The basics of the politics are that conservative worldviews are dominated by authority and obedience, while progressives’ central ideas are empathy and responsibility, with protection and empowerment the main roles of government. Lakoff also claims, I believe rightly, that empathy is the foundation of democracy and the philosophical underpinning of our Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. The specific issues he focuses on mostly are economics, the environment, health care, and wars; rarely does he address race, prisons, or schools.  Still, it is easy to use the frames he develops for any issue. Towards the end, Lakoff adds a nice chapter that synthesizes the development of cognitive linguistics with the history and traditions of science, math, philosophy, and other disciplines.

The science Lakoff discusses is useful and provocative. His attempt to use it to change the world is laudable and may work to some degree—though don’t think we’ll know for years to come. The kinds of frame changes about which he’s talking are literal changes in people’s minds; that take time, persistence, and even luck. In the meantime, he’s given me a powerful way to think about and understand the world.

race matters

Almost a year after Barrack Obama was elected president the debate about what his being the nation’s first biracial president means rages on. Simplifying and generalizing the arguments (always a precarious thing to do): some say it signifies a step beyond race to some place where we do not have to worry about it, where race has nothing to do with how we see and judge people; others admit the importance of Obama’s election, but also speak of the continued racism that people of color face and to statistics about the disproportionate number of people of color living in poverty, failing in our schools, suffering from toxins in their neighborhoods, sitting in prison, and generally dealing with the very real effects of institutional and systemic racism in our society.

In recent weeks the debate was inflamed by the arrest, in his own home, of noted scholar, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who publicly asserted that he had been the victim of racial profiling. The arresting officer denied the idea and refused to apologize, saying he had no reason to do so. The president weighed in; the papers and talk shows are having a field day. Predictably and revealingly, in a poll, about 3/4 of African-Americans said they thought race was a factor in the arrest; 2/3 of whites said it wasn’t; it is the privilege of the over-class to ignore the world in which the under-class lives.

There is hardly a better moment to read Cornell West’s 1993 classic Race Matters. In essays entitled “Nihilism in Black America,” “Beyond Affirmative Action: Equality and Identity,” “Black Sexuality: The Taboo Subject,” and more, West incisively and profoundly analyzes racism in the U.S. His carefully constructed prose elucidates complex ideas and stimulates further thought. He speaks truth to power in a way that is both provocative and obvious, frequently making me wonder why I hadn’t seen his point before that moment.

Among many, the idea that stands out for me at the moment is that African-Americans are intrinsically part of our national culture. They’ve been on the continent almost as long as white people. Our society has evolved with the contributions of both black and white people. To the extent that there is a “white” culture and a “black” culture (categories that clearly include a great deal of variety and individuality within them), they have evolved together, contributing to one another in both many, many ways. African-Americans are as “American” as the rest of us.

It is obvious to me that, as the title to this book suggests, race still matters in the U.S. and around the world. The sooner that white people in the U.S. accept and publicly acknowledge this reality, the sooner we will be able to take true steps to equality.

lincoln’s virtues: an ethical biography

“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

So said Abraham Lincoln at New York’s Cooper Union on February 27, 1860. It was near the beginning of his successful campaign to become President and he was speaking both in general and, more specifically, about slavery’s role in each state and in the nation as a whole.

I started reading about Lincoln in the hope of learning something about politics and speeches; I wanted a politician I could respect and from whom I could feel good about learning. Perusing the titles and back covers at a local bookstore, I discovered Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography (William Lee Miller, 2002). As a first book on Lincoln’s life, it’s probably not the best choice. It is a pretty dense analysis of Lincoln’s argument, his moral, ethical, and logical treatment of issues. It’s slow going and I finished three or four other books during the time I was working on it. However, I did learn some valuable lessons:

1. Prepare. In a series of now-famous debates, Lincoln—a self-taught lawyer from backwoods Illinois and at the time a one-term Congressman—took on one of the most powerful politicians of the era (Stephen Douglas) on the most controversial subject (slavery) in the nation. He didn’t win every point, but he did respectably most of the time and, more important, he clearly articulated his position. Lincoln spent months preparing for this work, a habit that he carried into almost everything that he did.
2. Work from something incontrovertible—or as close as you can get. Lincoln based his arguments against slavery on carefully worked out trains of logic that were founded on the Declaration of points Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the fundamental humanity of all human beings. While some people denied the full humanity of black slaves, Lincoln’s position was ultimately redeemed by the weight of majority opinion and the logic that if one group can be enslaved and dehumanized today, there’s no justification for not enslaving your group tomorrow.
3. Do the politics. Lincoln was a consummate politician. He counted votes. He curried favor, formed coalitions, and helped build a major political party. He argued, cajoled, encouraged, motivated, and twisted arms. He used most of the legal and respectable tools available to carry his points and win his goals—though he didn’t always win. He didn’t shy away from talking to those with whom he didn’t agree and he acknowledged the expertise and ability of others, sometimes even those who had disparaged him in the past. (His Secretary of War through most of the Civil War, Edwin Stanton, is a great example of someone who had strongly opposed Lincoln’s election, but who Lincoln appointed anyway because of his skills; the two became a powerful team.)
4. Do it because it’s right. Even under intense political pressure, Lincoln seemed never to lose sight of his larger goals and never to let personal gain be more important then communal good. At one point, trying to become the Senator from Illinois (something he wanted very much), he realized he couldn’t win and threw his support behind a candidate with less initial popularity (and who hadn’t supported him), but who was much preferred politically. He thereby helped his party and his ideological stance win, despite the personal loss. Consistently, he chose the right thing, as he defined it, over personal feelings (again, Stanton’s appointment is a good example).

Certainly, there are many perspectives on Lincoln and Miller’s is just one. However, Miller’s attempt to trace Lincoln’s moral and ethical development provides powerful access to and analysis of a crucial figure in our nation’s history. Whether you agree with Miller’s relatively rosy picture of Lincoln or not, looking at Lincoln through the lens of morality is welcome at a time when ethical behavior and moral principles seem, at least to this observer, less and less a part of our political rhetoric and life.