Civility: Manners, Morals and the Etiquette of Democracy.

• Author: Goodheart, Adam

by Stephen L. Carter Basic Books, $25

Let me start with a tale of two cities. I live now in Washington, D.C., in an apartment complex where I don't know my neighbors' names, although I do know what they watch on television, because the noise comes through the walls. The only time I come into contact with a broad cross-section of my fellow citizens is on the subway.

Not long before moving to Washington, I lived for a few months in a small town on the southern Italian coast. Every evening, nearly all the citizens, rich and poor, young and old, would gather in the piazza. Dressed to the nines, arm-in-arm with friends or relatives, they made stately laps of the baroque square. The young townspeople I knew told me that every night in the piazza, they saw their entire extended families, as well as nearly everyone else they'd ever known since they'd learned to walk. They also told me -- almost every last one of them -- that they longed for the day when they could move away and live somewhere else.

I suspect Stephen L. Carter, on the other hand, would rather enjoy living in that Italian town. In his new book, Civility, Carter joins the swelling ranks of writers (including Gertrude Himmelfarb, Alan Ehrenhalt, and Robert Putnam) who have bemoaned Americans' loss of community spirit and social graces. Carter, who teaches law at Yale, makes it clear that he is fed up with sullen sales clerks, heedless motorists, public displays of profanity, telemarketers, strangers who call him by his first name, and people who don't know the names of their own neighbors. In short, he believes -- with some justice -- that many of his fellow Americans have just about given up having any regard for the opinions and feelings of others.

"We care less and less about our fellow citizens," Carter writes. "We may see them as obstacles or competitors, or we may not see them at all, but unless they happen to be our friends, we rarely think we owe them anything. ... A big part of our incivility crisis stems from the fact that we do not know each other or even want to try; and, not knowing each other, we seem to think that how we treat each other does not matter."

This is no mere reminder to stand up straight and mind our language: Carter's definition of civility goes far beyond mere good manners, though these are part of what he has in mind. Rather, it rests ultimately on the biblical injunction to love thy neighbor. Carter's supreme example of a civil act, one that he refers to...