The ordinary virtues : moral order in a divided world /

GRANT, by Ron Chernow. (Penguin Press, $40.) Chernow gives us a Grant for our time, comprehensively recounting not only the victorious Civil War general but also a president who fought against white supremacy groups like the Ku Klux Klan and championed the right of eligible citizens to exercise the vote. GOOD ME BAD ME, by Ali Land. (Flatiron, $25.99.) This debut novel's teenage narrator is speaking to the mother she loves and misses. It's a one-sided conversation because her mother is about to go on trial for murder, and her daughter is the one who turned her in. THE RIVIERA SET: Glitz, Glamour, and the Hidden World of High Society, by Mary S. Lovell. (Pegasus, $27.95.) Full of gossip about what Somerset Maugham called a "sunny place for shady people," Lovell's narrative describes the entertainments staged by the various owners of a chateau in the south of France. THE ORDINARY VIRTUES: Moral Order in a Divided World, by Michael Ignatieff. (Harvard, $27.95.) This admirable little book, in which the author grapples with whether globalization is drawing us together or tearing us apart, represents a triumph of execution over conception. FRESH COMPLAINT: Stories, by Jeffrey Eugenides. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) In his debut collection, written over three decades, Eugenides explores variations on the theme of failure - marital, creative and financial - while at times reprising characters from his novels "Middlesex" and "The Marriage Plot." WHY WE SLEEP: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, by Matthew Walker. (Scribner, $27.) The director of Berkeley's Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab makes the argument for why sleep is essential to our well-being: "to reset our brain and body health each day." GREATER GOTHAM: A History of New York City From 1898 to 1919, by Mike Wallace. (Oxford, $45.) A vibrant, detailed chronicle, almost 1,200 pages long, of the 20 years that made New York City the place we know today, with new bridges, the advent of Broadway and the opening of the first subway lines. COMPLETE STORIES, by Kurt Vonnegut. Edited by Jerome Klimkowitz and Dan Wakefield. (Seven Stories, $45.) Vonnegut used his early short fiction to test the themes that animated his later novels. For completists, these 98 stories (including five published for the first time) will be like a boxed set of a musician's first recordings. AKATA WARRIOR, by Nnedi Okorafor. (Viking, $18.99.) The longawaited sequel to Okorafor's "Akata Witch" is about a 13-year-old Nigerian girl whose mystical powers could save the world. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

Moral progress is the concept that moral improvement is possible. It assumes objective moral truths exist and that individuals, cultures, states, or groups have room for moral improvement. Its inverse, moral regress, is the concept that it is possible to behave less morally than we currently do. In this work, while presenting no arguments, -Ignatieff (president & rector, Central European Univ.) seems to hold that moral progress is impossible, but that moral regress is fleeting. Responding to what he calls "moral näiveté," Ignatieff purports to engage in ad hoc folk experimental philosophy, traveling the world to discover whether there is moral consensus across cultures. His conclusion is that people don't care about human rights but instead a loose collection of ordinary virtues; furthermore, these virtues needn't be consistent, and people's adherence to them ebb and flow with adversity and self-interest. The author eschews the impartiality and evidence associated with experimental philosophy; instead, each chapter consists of vignettes peppered with divisive language and proclamations of moral failings by faceless strawmen tilting at moral progress. VERDICT Not recommended.-William Simkulet, Cleveland State Univ., OH © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.