The Book of Virtues (subtitled A Treasury of Great Moral Stories) is a 1993 anthology edited by William Bennett. It consists of 370 passages across ten chapters devoted to a different virtue, each of the latter escalating in complexity as they progress. Included in its pages are selections from ancient and modern sources, ranging from the Bible, Greek mythology, Aesop's Fables, William Shakespeare, and the Brothers Grimm, to later authors such as Hilaire Belloc, Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Frost, and Oscar Wilde.
A former Secretary of Education for the United States, Bennett began developing the book around 1988 at the behest of teachers who pointed out what they viewed as the deficiencies of moral education in their schools. Work on the project was paused during his tenure as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and resumed by 1990 after he turned down an offer to lead the Republican National Convention. With the help of his friend and speechwriter John Cribb, Bennett gathered a wide range of passages for the collection, envisioning it as a modern-day version of the McGuffey's Readers.
The Book of Virtues was published in November 1993 by Simon & Schuster, receiving 40,000 copies in its first printing. Despite the publisher's initial lack of faith and advertising, concerns from industry skeptics, and mixed reviews for both its content and Bennett's own contributions, it became a New York Times Best Seller for more than 80 weeks (peaking at No. 1 in January 1994), and sold up to three million within six months in print.
Though Bennett intended Virtues as a one-off title, audience demand and feedback encouraged him to follow it up in 1995 with The Moral Compass: Stories for a Life's Journey and two spin-offs for younger readers. The following year, it was adapted as the PBS animated series Adventures from the Book of Virtues. The franchise spawned various merchandise by the start of the 2000s, continued in print until 2008, and inspired an array of conservative, liberal, and Christian-focused alternatives as well as a parody; a competitor's answer to the official spin-offs was also the focus of a 1995–1997 trademark-infringement lawsuit. A 30th-anniversary edition, which kept the virtue list intact and updated the contents, was published in 2022.
Overview Intended for the moral education of the young, The Book of Virtues collects 370 passages of various types and provenance across ten chapters, each of the latter devoted to a specific virtue: self-discipline, compassion, responsibility, friendship, work, courage, perseverance, honesty, loyalty, and faith. The chapters begin with simple texts, and escalate in complexity as they progress; compiler William Bennett provides two pages of opening commentary for each virtue, and a short introductory note for the individual selections. Bennett advises that his anthology should not be "read from cover to cover", but instead be used for browsing and bookmarking. According to John Allen Paulos of The New York Times Book Review, "Many of the stories are adaptations of the originals, a few are from non-Western sources, and most are only a few pages long." Public-domain material comprises an estimated 85% of Bennett's collection, which also surveys three thousand years of literature; one of the most recent selections, "Instant Hero", first appeared as a January 1982 Washington Post story.
The anthology opens with an extract from Plato's Republic:
Notable stories told or excerpted in this collection include: "The Steadfast Tin Soldier" by Hans Christian Andersen, cited as a "favorite of the Bennett family" The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge The English fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk" "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" by Leo Tolstoy The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams "The Little Engine That Could", attributed to Rev. Charles S. Wing
The Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus, and the legends of Robin Hood and Little John, William Tell, and George Washington's cherry tree (as related to Mason Locke Weems) also appear in the book. Four poems by Robert Frost"The Pasture", "A Time to Talk", "Mending Wall", and "The Road Not Taken"are reproduced therein. George Washington's Farewell Address, as printed in the book, omits the final segment mentioning "the insidious wiles of foreign influence" and "the need to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world". The shortest passage in the collection is Ernest Shackleton's apocryphal, early-1910s recruitment ad for Antarctic-expedition members:
Also featured are selections from the Bible, Aesop's Fables, African and Native American folklore, and Grimms' Fairy Tales; the works of Hilaire Belloc, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rudyard Kipling, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Theodore Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, William Shakespeare, and Oscar Wilde (among many others) are represented as well. The original release contained biographies on Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Anne Sullivan, and Harriet Tubman, while the 30th anniversary edition from 2022 profiled Mother Teresa, Navy SEAL Michael P. Murphy, and honorees from the September 11 attacks of 2001. The flap at the back cover contains a photo of Bennett, his wife Elayne, and their two sons.
Development
William Bennett had served as Secretary of Education for President Ronald Reagan and often made school trips during his tenure. According to Bennett, The Book of Virtues grew out of conversations with teachers, who expressed difficulty in communicating common moral principles to diverse student bodies; as such, he originally intended the collection to be used by teachers. Bennett, who worked on the collection as a "labor of love" and "for purely personal reasons", set out to write a McGuffey's Reader for the 1990s (as proposed to his publisher Simon & Schuster), and despite the presence of writings from political figures, vowed to downplay any political undertones in it. The anthology was part of a two-title, $187,000 contract with the publisher, along with The De-Valuing of America.
Bennett equally aimed his collection at children and adults alike.
As he wrote in his introduction: "[It] does not discuss issues like nuclear war, abortion, creationism, or euthanasia. This may come as a disappointment to some."
He told Publishers Weekly, in October 1995, that while preparing Virtues: "I decided to take a close look at some of the books American children were reading at their homes and schools around the turn of the 20th century. This is when the country had a clear view of the education of the young in this direction."
Around 1988, Bennett began work on Virtues and De-Valuing after his tenure as Secretary wound down, although that work entered a hiatus during his subsequent stint as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (a position nicknamed the "Drug Czar"). When he was called to replace Lee Atwater as head of the Republican National Committee in 1990, he turned down the offer for the sake of paying back his book-contract money. Soon afterward, Bennett went through his literature collection to select the stories, poems, and other literary accounts that would become part of Virtues. He enlisted the help of John Cribb, a friend of his and a former speech writer for the Education Department, to compile the work; Cribb "arranged to be paid in a percentage of royalties" for his involvement. After struggling to find a different publisher, Cribb and Bennett turned to Simon & Schuster to release the anthology, but with only US$5,000 in advance fees for that title this time around.
Release The Book of Virtues was mentioned as early as a May 1993 Chicago Tribune story on Bennett, and was published in November 1993 by Simon & Schuster. A four-tape audiobook edition, released the following September, featured readings by the compiler and guest stars including Michael York and Dana Ivey; in this rendition, Charlton Heston recited "The Ten Commandments" from Exodus. In early January 1994, Bennett appeared on C-SPAN's Booknotes to discuss the collection; some time later, California's Republican Senate candidate Michael Huffington promoted and praised it in one of his campaign television commercials. Overseas, a Latin American Spanish version (El libro de las virtudes) was issued by Argentina's Javier Vergara in 1995, as well as an Australian edition from Bookman Press. A 30th anniversary edition, published in 2022, kept the virtue list intact; removed several sections from the original; and added new material comprising 33% of the updated text.
Reception Sales
Virtues debuted at #13 on The New York Times Best Seller List (Nonfiction) for December 26, 1993. It secured the #1 spot during its fourth week (on January 16, 1994), and remained on the chart for 88 consecutive weeks by late 1995, the 30th-longest run as of 2014. When it reached #1, the second rank on the list belonged to Howard Stern's Private Parts, a fact that did not go unnoticed by The Washington Post E. J. Dionne. Bennett's accomplishment, in Dionne's opinion, "suggests that beneath our fascination with the prurient, the tasteless and the outrageous lies a yearning for something betterespecially for our kids."
After an initial run of 40,000 copies (amid low expectations on the publisher's part and lack of advertising), The Book of Virtues sold 94,719 during Christmas week in 1993. Benefitting from word of mouth, this figure rose to more than 500,000 by late February 1994 (after 14 printings spanning 635,000 copies), and then 1.9–3 million within six months in print, helping it become one of the bestselling titles of the 1990s and a surprise hit for Simon & Schuster. The Los Angeles Times declared it "one of the most unlikely in years", while the Washingtonian magazine (quoted in the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel) observed its outreach's transcendence over political and religious lines, and its competition with Hollywood biographies, New Age guides, and financial books. During its first two years of release, the anthology quickly became a staple of elementary-school curricula.
In light of its success, Bennett told a benefit audience in May 1995, "Last month I outsold Howard Stern 8 to 1, and Roseanne 5 to 1. That tells me American people are interested in serious things." With earnings from the title estimated at $5 million, he purchased a North Carolina residence he dubbed as "the beach house virtue built". By his own estimates, he also stood to collect $50,000 in annual royalties. According to Rolling Stone, Bennett became a "one-man empire" with his Virtues series, a perspective that would later be concurred during the run of its animated adaptation. Still, with the first installment having reached less than 1% of the U.S. population by November of the previous year, he hoped for another organization to distribute it royalty-free for wider readership.
Reviews
From the time of its original publication, response to The Book of Virtues was mixed. In January 1994, The Washington Post carried two separate reviews by Laura Sessions Stepp and E. J. Dionne. While commending Bennett on leaving out the more serious issues stated in his introduction, Sessions Stepp was otherwise critical. "Several flaws," she said, "limit its appeal. One serious weakness is that despite its heft, The Book of Virtues is far too narrow, drawing almost exclusively from classical Western sources. This is a primer that reflects the philosophy of [students] in a Catholic boys' school." Dionne was more favorable: "[W]hile some will not agree with all of Bennett's selections, it's hard to quibble with the 10 virtues around which he organizes his book... [I]n preaching the virtues, he is speaking not just to 'the underclass,' but also to the middle class and to those whom Jesse Jackson refers to as 'the overclass.'"