odds, and the doctor must decide whether to be honest or kind, or more likely how to balance honesty and kindness in a way that is appropriate for the patient in front of her. Aristotle recognized that balancing acts like these beg for wisdom, and that abstract or ethereal wisdom would not do. Wisdom has to be practical because the issues we face are embedded in our everyday work. They are not hypotheticals being raised in college ethics courses. They are quandaries that any practitioner must resolve to do her work well. Practical wisdom combines the will to do the right thing with the skill to figure out what the right thing is. In this blog, we will describe the essential characteristics of practical wisdom, and show why it's needed to inform the everyday activities of doctors, lawyers, and teachers--parents, lovers, and friends. We will discuss some impressive examples of wisdom--and its absence-in practice. We will show that rules and incentives--the tools we reach for to improve our schools or our clinics, or even our banks--are no substitute for wisdom. Worse, they are the enemies of wise practice. And finally we will suggest that when wisdom is cultivated it is not only good for society but is, as Aristotle thought, a key to our own happiness . Wisdom isn't just something we "ought" to have. It's something we want to have to flourish. Our book makes all of these points in detail. In the blog, we will try to give