For a century and a half artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. Applying a tradition of "virtue ethics" to our lives in modern economies, this title affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations.

McCloskey's sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities--from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich--overturns assumptions about being bourgeois. Applying a new tradition of "virtue ethics," she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults.