Whenever I am reading a book or listening to an argument, I always pay attention to superlatives — moments when an author moves beyond merely saying something matters and instead argues that it matters most. A superlative is language pushed to its highest degree: not just important, but the most important. Such claims are always worth examining carefully, because they reveal what an author believes deserves our deepest attention, concern, and moral energy.
One recent example comes from The Honesty Crisis: Preserving Our Most Treasured Virtue in 
an Increasingly Dishonest World, published this month by Oxford University Press. In it, Christian B. Miller, a philosophy professor at Wake Forest University, argues that “out of all the virtues, honesty is arguably the most valuable.”
Regardless of whether you agree that honesty is the most important virtue, Miller is undeniably correct that we are living through a crisis of honesty. His book explores that crisis through chapters on deepfakes, online infidelity, AI-assisted cheating in education, fake news and political deception, dishonesty in celebrity culture and religious life, and the larger question of why honesty still matters in a world where deception can so often seem rewarded.
As the longtime leader of The Honesty Project — a major interdisciplinary research initiative exploring the philosophy and science of honesty, including how honesty shapes relationships, institutions, politics, and everyday life — and the author of the earlier academic book The Character Gap: How Good Are We?, Miller is well positioned to reflect on this broader cultural crisis. In this latest book, he distills years of academic research into an accessible and engaging volume for a general audience.
I was an undergraduate philosophy major, and I appreciate Miller’s precise exploration of exactly what honesty means and requires. If you want to better understand our current crisis of honesty — and how we might begin responding to it — I recommend Miller’s book.
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