Volume 50, Number 3 · February 27, 2003
Call Me Mister
By Alan Ryan
Respect in a World of Inequality
by Richard Sennett
Norton, 288 pp., $24.95
Most accounts of the failings of the welfare state make gloomy reading—but Richard Sennett's Respect is nothing of the sort. For any reader interested in Sennett's subject and prepared to argue with the author, Respect offers the author's optimistic side of a conversation about the extreme difficulty, if not the impossibility, of making complete sense of human existence. The liveliness of the book reflects the vivacity of its author. In an age of academic specialization, Professor Sennett defies classification: he grew up expecting to be a professional cellist; when a hand injury prevented that, he became a sociologist, a cultural theorist, an urbanist, an architectural historian, and a novelist. Respect draws on all these resources. It is part autobiography, part urban sociology, part moral philosophy, and wholly engrossing.
Review, 4606 words
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