Recommendations you can check.
American philosopher; A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University, working on ethics and moral character; author of The Character Gap and The Honesty Crisis.
5 things
DupedBook Timothy R. Levine
Levine is my favorite empirical researcher working on honesty and Duped deserves to be the classic discussion of truthful communication for years to come.
Five Books interview: the best books on Honesty
2026-09-16·fivebooks.com ↗
Les MisérablesBook Victor Hugo
I went with Les Misérables because it so vividly illustrates two ideas about character which are central to my thinking.
Five Books interview: the best books on Moral Character
2018-03-30·fivebooks.com ↗
The Brothers KaramazovBook Fyodor Dostoevsky
I should first confess that The Brothers Karamazov is my favorite work of literature, so I am sure it would end up on a number of different ‘best books’ lists.
Five Books interview: the best books on Moral Character
2018-03-30·fivebooks.com ↗
Character Strengths and VirtuesBook Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman
When it comes to books in psychology, of which there are not many, since it is such an article-driven field, Peterson and Seligman’s Character Strengths and Virtues has been extremely influential.
Five Books interview: the best books on Moral Character
2018-03-30·fivebooks.com ↗
The Little Engine That CouldBook Watty Piper
Instead, I chose The Little Engine That Could because it is one of our family favourites, and because it is all about moral character.
Five Books interview: the best books on Moral Character
2018-03-30·fivebooks.com ↗
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.