An ethical compass : coming of age in the 21st century : the ethics prize of the Elie Wiesel foundation for humanity /

This book consists of 30 essays by winners of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity Ethics Prize, which is awarded to full-time undergraduate juniors or seniors. The subjects addressed convey the complexity and importance of what is understood as ethics. One wishes the book had included the criteria for prize selection; the essays share a remarkable reflective quality-often relating to the authors' personal experiences-and the assumption that "we are implicated [morally] by our mere existence in this world," as contributor Mae Gibson writes. The essays' breadth emerges through six categories: Conflict, Memory, Conscience, Education, Illness, and God. An essay on the wartime trauma of Bosnian women speaks through a nuanced reading of Euripides' The Trojan Women. Another finds in quotidian episodes an evil from the "decline in the internalization of ethics and moral imperatives." "Who Killed Superman" considers popular culture a source of the destructive notion that goodness is dull. VERDICT Collectively such themes bear a maturity and originality that betray none of the stereotypes associated with their student authors. Highly recommended for all readers who consider ethical reflection central to social life.-Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Univ.-Erie (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.