After downloading his new book, The Road to Character, I started by skipping to his concluding chapter, where he writes,

The things we call character endure over the long term–courage, honesty, humility. People with character are capable of a long obedience in the same direction, of staying attached to people and causes and callings consistently through thick and thin…They are anchored by permanent attachments to important things. In the realm of intellect, they have a set of permanent convictions about fundamental truths. In the realm of emotion, they are enmeshed in a web of unconditional loves. In the realm of action, they have a permanent commitment to tasks that cannot be completed in a lifetime.

…Wisdom starts with epistemological modesty. The world is immeasurably complex and the private stock of reason is small. We are generally not capable of understanding the complex web of causes that drive events. We are not even capable of grasping the unconscious depths of our own minds. We should be skeptical of abstract reasoning or of trying to apply universal rules across different contexts…The humble person understands that experience is a better teacher than pure reason. He understands that wisdom is not knowledge. Wisdom emerges out of a collection of individual virtues. It is knowing how to behave when perfect knowledge is lacking.

As to whether I will like the entire book, I am worried about two things.

1. The reviews I have read are bland and uninteresting. An interesting book should provoke interesting reviews.

2. My instinct was to skip over the meat of the book, which is his biographical sketches of people whose character he admires. When I get around to reading those, the question is whether I will find them rewarding.