Through telling stories about civility, this little book aims to provoke second thoughts about the effects of incivility on our lives and the lives of those around us. As short quips of moral outrage overtake more and more of our "civilized" conversations, the slow plod of thinking and acting civilly is easily left behind like a quaint and simpleminded distraction from the business of standing up for ourselves and our convictions. This is what the author wishes to turn on its head through examples of civility in action and the encouragement of "collective thinking" in which civility flowers.

James W. Heisig is a professor emeritus at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan, where he has spent the past forty-five years promoting the dialogue among philosophies and religions East and West at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture. Widely known to hundreds of thousands of students for revolutionizing the study of the Chinese and Japanese writing systems, his published writings and translations have contributed greatly to the study of Japanese philosophy around the world.