Honor: A History
The first complete survey of this subject, tracing the  evolution of honor as an ideal from the Greeks onward. The subject is in  the cultural air at the present, as antagonists argue over whether the  "honorable" course is to persevere in Iraq or withdraw and as the honor of  U.S. forces is tarnished by the prison abuses scandal. The importance of  honor is present in the earliest records of civilization. Today, while it  may still be an essential concept in Islamic cultures, in the West, honor  has been disparaged and dismissed as obsolete. In this lively and  authoritative book, James Bowman traces the curious and fascinating history  of this ideal, from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment and to the  killing fields of World War I and the despair of Vietnam. Bowman reminds us  that the fate of honor and the fate of morality and even manners are deeply  interrelated. His book is an indispensable document in a time of growing  concern about the erosion of values.