Winters is a freelance writer and editor. In the following essay, she discusses themes in, and critical responses to, Walter Lippmann's A Preface to Morals.

When Walter Lippmann's book, A Preface to Morals, was published in 1929, many people in American society were perplexed by a growing sense of alienation and disillusionment. Old religious values, faith in the forward progress of science, and optimism no longer seemed appropriate in a world that had seen the unprecedented horrors of World War I—horrors that were unrelieved by religionaccompanied by carnage that was assisted, not prevented, by modern science. Many people, like Lippmann, felt that the old sources of authority in society—the church, the government, and other traditional authorities such as the family and class structure—were no longer relevant and that faith in them had been irretrievably corrupted by the changes of modern life. Some of these people...