PROLIFICALLY EXPLANATORY, the thesis of this brilliant book exposes all manner of conflicts and corruptions in our civilization as failures

THE COMMERCIAL MORAL SYNDROME Shun force. Come to voluntary agreements. Be honest. Collaborate easily with strangers and aliens. Compete. Respect contracts. Use initiative and enterprise. Be open to inventiveness and novelty. Be efficient. Promote comfort and convenience. Dissent for the sake of the task. Invest for productive purposes. Be industrious. Be thrifty. Be optimistic. THE GUARDIAN MORAL SYNDROME Shun trading. Exert prowess. Be obedient and disciplined. Adhere to tradition. Respect hierarchy. Be loyal. Take vengeance. Deceive for the sake of the task. Make rich use of leisure. Be ostentatious. Dispense largesse. Be exclusive. Show fortitude. Be fatalistic. Treasure honor.

of a usually productive symbiosis between two fiercely different moral codes.

Government inherits the ancient honor system of hunters and warriors, a fundamentally territorial morality, deeply conservative, founded on trust only of insiders. The more recent morality of trade, by contrast, is open, innovative, optimistic, founded on trust of outsiders. Each system works well and supplements the other. But when organizations mix precepts from the two systems, monsters arise such as organized crime and military-industrial collusion.

Science, surprisingly enough, is a companion of commerce and adopts its ethics (and can be corrupted by government morality) whereas art is the creature of guardians. Caste is a traditional way to keep the moral systems separate, but it is too rigid, leading to dead ends such as "the British disease." Moral role-switching offers a better path for adaptation.

Jane Jacobs has maintained her depth of originality by remaining a firmly independent scholar. Her previous works include the book that saved the world from urban renewal, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), and Cities and the Wealth of Nations (1984). —Stewart Brand