Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment

by Anne Colby, William Damon

A look at the lives of twenty-three American moral leaders shows how these hometown heroes acquired their moral goals and sustained them in the face of grave risk and sacrifice, working for everything from civil rights to the poor.

Genres: Psychology, Education

368 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1992

About the author

Anne Colby is a scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Linde · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting, but boring

[Tatiana Argabright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally I obtained a copy of this book because it was mentioned in "The Sociopath Next Door"
I have mixed opinions about this book, on the one hand I appreciated the interviews and stories of the moral exemplars. On the other hand, I found many of the passages that were not largely focused on the interviews or stories to be a bit bland and boring. There were times when I started skimming through the analysis because I had already gotten the point that the author was making but they continued to make it.

[Revesk · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful and surprising psychological examination of people who wholeheartedly pursue a cause for decades--not famous people, but effective in their spheres. Well worth the extensive time required to thoughtfully consider the ideas presented. I look forward to reading their more current work.

[Loren Jolley-ruud · Rating 1 out of 5]

Now an outdated perspective of what it means to be a “moral exemplar”. Tones of White saviour-ism and privilege run rampant.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was originally published in 1992 and that might make it seem to you to be somewhat dated. And the people who are highlighted in the book as moral exemplars (Five of them) are probably all dead now. But the concept of people who take doing the right thing with their lives is still a timely concept. And the book is still available as an e-book as well as an audible book so someone thinks it is still relevant!

I was drawn to this book because I am a war tax resister and have been intermittently since the 1970s. This year I am into this conscientious civil disobedience big time because my father died last year and left me $1 million in federally taxable money and I am refusing to pay $130,000 in federal taxes because 50% of that money will go to the military. But enough about me. If you want to learn more about WTR go to NWTRCC.org

The book is a combination of stories about five particularly admirable people and a lot of observations about what 23 moral exemplars have in common and how they came to be the way they are. There are quite a few words from the book included in the notes to this review. My main objection to the book and maybe I should not blame of the authors for this since they did not admit to inserting the matter of religion into the book intentionally. It just was an important factor for many of the people they interviewed. I am not religious and should admit to being in fact fairly anti-religious these days. So I would like to think that people could do meaningful things like the people in this book even without religion. The authors did try to talk around this a little bit.

The book also contains a fair amount of discussion about what were then current psychological and sociological ideas about how people came to be gung ho world changers. I do not know anything about how those theories have survived the last 25 years since the book was published. I did not read the book with the intention of taking issue with anything written and I did find quite a bit that did resonate with my experience as a person who has been pretty significantly involved with social action for the past 50 years. I have talked the talk and walked the walk so it was interesting to read someone's viewpoint about how that goes based on extensive interviews with 23 people. The book explains in some detail how those people were selected. The book was limited to living people in the US who were willing to participate with the project.