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Rating: 
Summary: An intelligent example of moral reasoning
Review: It's very difficult to write a book about some of the toughest political and moral issues of our day, and come out pleasing many people. I like this book for the intelligent approach it takes to examining the historical facts of an issue, making an honest attempt to see different perspectives on it, and then showing how the disagreement itself can be helpful. Surely, even the most sophisticated moral reasoning tends to reflect temperamental biases, emotional needs, and background more than it brings us to any sort of universal agreement. However, at least taking stock of the different sides of an issue and the priorities they reflect helps us understand our own position better. I appreciate that a previous reviewer found this book bascially a rehash of predictable left-wing arguments that reflect the author's politics. It is interesting that this was the basis for such a terrible rating, since the author's predictable left-wing opinions actually are a very small part of the content and message of the book, and seem to serve more an example than anything else. Presumably all that background information on each issue is viewed either as trivial or overly biased, and I didn't find either to be true. Ironically, the fact that many people will have such a strong knee-jerk reaction to opinions that differ with their own is part of the rationale for the way the book is organized; to show how sometimes examining the disagreement itself is useful rather than just choosing a side because it coincides with our previous thinking. Especially with such important and emotionally charged issues as these.
Rating: 
Summary: Old Arguments destroy a predictable book
Review: The moral Imagination is one of those books you have to wonder why you finished reading it. You also have to wonder why the publisher allowed this drivel to be printed. The author is a good writer, however this book is nothing more than a op-ed piece explaining the authors belief on 5 Moral Issues 1. Abortion
2. Suicide
3. Euthanasia
4. Capital Punishment
5. Racial Justice and Affirmative Action If you would like to know what he said on each issue just take the left-wing position on each and you have his thoughts. While his positions on each issue is predictable the tedious part about the book is his argumentation for why he believes the way he does. Absolutely no new ground is covered and most of his arguments are simply rehashes of arguments that have been put forward 5 years before this book was published. If he would have refined the arguments or at least taken out some of the errors of the earlier arguments the book would have been better. Not to bore the reader of this review I will give but one example of completely erroneous concepts that are brought forward as truth in this book. On pg. 25 in the Abortion chapter the author quotes Cell biologist Charles Gardner as follows: "There is no program to specify the fate of each cell," notes Gardner. "Each stage brings new information, information that will change as the body pattern changes." One single cell may contribute randomly to the formation of several different body parts. "With this layering of chance event upon chance event the embryo gradually evolves its form." Not only is the person that the embryo is to become not programmed in the fertilized egg, not even so much as a fingerprint is already there. The ovum is in no way, argues Gardner, "a pre-packaged human being" OH REALLY Come on now with the advances in the understanding of the human genome and of the possibility of cloning in the near future. I don't know of any competent scientist that will tell you that the human DNA is NOT an architectural map of that person. In other words cloning works because the DNA stores all your personal data in it to make a exact replica of you. Now this is not a Pro Life vs. Pro Choice issue here. What I am trying to show is the authors poor choice of so-called evidence that he uses to prove his point. There were many reputable sources that Mr. Tivnan could have used instead of relying on a article from Nation magazine printed in the 1980's. In Synopsis, his beliefs are predictable and his reasoning and arguments given are old and in many cases patently false.
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