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I RECEIVED in the mail a set of galleys of The Moral Compass, William Bennett's new anthology of moral stories, in mid August, at which point The Book of Virtues, Mr. Bennett's previous collection, had been on the New York Times Book Review's best-seller list for 86 straight weeks. O.J. Simpson, Robert McNamara, Greg Louganis, Shirley MacLaine, and Robin Quivers had come and gone, but Bill Bennett, like the Energizer Bunny, was still going strong. This is in and of itself a moral story, captured in the name Mr. Bennett gave the beach house he bought with the royalties from The Book of Virtues "The House That Virtue Built."
For those who swear by The Book of Virtues, the main point of this review can be summed up in a single sentence: The Moral Compass is to The Book of Virtues as Life with Mother is to Life with father. Only the order of battle has been changed. Where The Book of Virtues was organized around ten traits of character, The Moral Compass is divided into seven chapters representing the stages of life: "Home and Hearth," "Into the World," "Standing Fast," "Easing the Path," "Mothers and Fathers, Husbands and Wives," "Citizenship and Leadership," and "What We Live By." But architecture notwithstanding, Mr. Bennett and John T. Cribb, his collaborator and coeditor de facto, have gone back to the well and...