Shore, director of the antipoverty organization Share Our Strength and philanthropic consultant, has previously written about social entrepreneurs who introduce capital-generating techniques to the nonprofit sector (The Cathedral Within
). Here he offers a variant on the concept in the form of moral entrepreneurs, people who "do what it takes to bring morality to places where it hasn't been before." Offering several prominent examples, he observes that such people often do the most through the simplest of actions, like the gesture of friendship Pee Wee Reese offered Jackie Robinson in front of racist baseball fans and teammates. Each of us is likewise capable of following our conscience, he claims, using his son to demonstrate the principle. After a strong early emphasis on the boy's flair for "obfuscation and deception," a proud father recounts his son's attendance at a rally shortly after 9/11. That tragedy underscores Shore's belief that we can no longer afford to focus solely on our immediate surroundings, but must strive to raise the quality of life throughout the world; injustice allowed to fester elsewhere, he warns, will eventually play out to our own detriment. Readers will likely perceive an intuitive validity to his suggestion that the major news coverage of recent scandals involving corporate fraud and sexual abuse by priests is "directly related" to 9/11, because our reaction immediately after "spawned a new premium on conscientious and ethical conduct." The theory might not hold up to scrutiny, but this and other doubts about the book's grasp on the big picture are abated by Shore's sincere passion and attention to the small details that make life worth living. (Feb. 17)
