Rating: 
Summary: a book for today, but not only today
Review: This book is valuable if only for framing the problem of how the strong ought to interact with the weak. As we in the USA approach war with a weaker nation, flush with confidence and righteousness, dismissive of counsel from far and near -- reverence is exactly the virtue most needed, and Woodruff's book makes this plain, even if not directly.This book is not a veiled argument about something current. The reviewer who claimed this is a self-help book apparently only skimmed it, or perhaps has only skimmed self-help books. No contemporary self-help book would, as this one does, ground its claims in the likes of Thucydides, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, and Tennyson; no self-help book would, as this one does, fail to mention the internet; no self-help book would, as this one does, dare to omit a section on "[topic] in the business world." Woodruff's book is what it claims to be -- a thoughtful account of what reverence is and why it matters. Since the book's subject is a feeling or a capacity for those feelings, it is inherently difficult to render in precise terms. I believe this accounts for what has been called its repetiveness, but I do not regard this as a flaw. A book characterizing love or courage would need to be similarly repetitive. Woodruff approaches and reapproaches an elusive topic from several perspectives and many literary sources, never pretending to exhaustiveness or rigor. Readers may share my quibbles as to whether the book successfully distinguishes reverence from respect, modesty and humility; or to put the matter exactly, whether one virtue, reverence, should be considered distinct from and preferable to those values. But by whatever name we might call it -- and surely reverence will do -- the book achieves its aim, to elucidate reverence and call our attention to its rightful place among the virtues.
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