by Wray Herbert

About the author: Wray Herbert is a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report, a weekly news magazine.

Only in contemporary America could selecting a family anthology be considered a political act. On one cultural flank is famous Republican moralist William Bennett’s bestselling Book of Virtues, a hefty collection of tales, fables and poems celebrating universal virtues such as courage, compassion and honesty. Side by side with the Bennett tome in many bookstores is Herbert Kohl and Colin Greer’s A Call to Character, a similar assemblage of proverbs and stories organized around equally cherished values. No one could blame the casual browser for arbitrarily grabbing one or the other. But it’s not a casual choice. These two volumes represent a fundamental and acrimonious division over what critics...