Human Goodness

In his many best-selling books, Yi-Fu Tuan seizes big, metaphysical issues and considers them in uniquely accessible ways.Human Goodnessis evidence of this talent and is both as simple, and as epic, as it sounds. Genuinely good people and their actions, Tuan contends, are far from boring, naive, and trite; they are complex, varied, and enormously exciting. In a refreshing antidote to skeptical times, he writes of ordinary human courtesies, as simple as busing your dishes after eating, that make society functional and livable. And he writes of extraordinary courage and inventiveness under the weight of adversity and evil. He considers the impact of communal goodness over time, and his sketches of six very different individuals-Confucius, Socrates, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, John Keats, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, and Simone Weil-confirm that there are human lives that can encourage and lead us to our better selves. Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the Public Library Association

Yi-Fu Tuan is the author of more than two dozen critically acclaimed books, including Space and Place, Topophilia, Escapism, Coming Home to China, and Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets. His previous books published by the University of Wisconsin Press are The Good Life, Morality and Imagination, and the autobiography Who Am I? Tuan is theJ. K. Wright and Vilas Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has been honored with the Cullum Medal of the American Geographical Society, the LaurTat d'Honneur of the International Geographical Union, and the Charles Homer Haskins Lectureship of the American Council of Learned Societies.