wrong and that it is honorable, and it is difficult to imagine a person having these beliefs (if at all) without experiencing some dilemma. Honor among thieves will not likely seem morally wrong to the thieves themselves, even if thievery does. For better or for worse, a person’s honor code guides his or her sense of what is morally good, and vice versa — which explains why the perceived wrongness of an act will often be central to its being shameful. For the agent herself, even if not for the spectator, moral constraints seem to be sewn into the fabric of honor. It may be that such theoretical questions are beyond the scope of this primarily historical study (indeed, the book’s copyright page lists ‘Social change — History’ prior to the topic, ‘Social change — Moral and ethical aspects’). Appiah does neglect, however, to address one of his self-assigned historical subjects, namely, the influence of ‘a tradition of moral hostility to pride’ (p. 17). In the book’s first chapter, Appiah promises to discuss Christian and Stoic antagonism in the following chapter. So the reader is disappointed at missing the chance to know Appiah’s thoughts on the matter when he fails to broach the topic in that chapter, as well as in the rest of the book. In any case, Appiah’s new book raises these and many other important and neglected philosophical questions, which merit careful investigation. That Appiah was able to accomplish this in a popular book, while simultaneously offering a history of social change, is remarkable and sets a new bar for philosophical works in that genre. JEREMY FISCHER University of Washington, U.S.A. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5930.2010.00511.x The Presence of Nature: A Study in Phenomenology and Environmental Philosophy S.P. J Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 viii + 167 pp., (hb) £50.00 James’ overall aim is ‘to demonstrate the merits of a phenomenological approach [his own] to environmental philosophy’ (p. 153). The result will therefore be of particular interest to those working in either of these philosophical traditions. Those already steeped in the phenomenological literature may well object to the ‘shameless . . . plun- der[ing]’ (p. 9) of major works James carries out in order to create his own phenom- enological approach, but others better equipped than I will have to judge for themselves the quality of his engagement with phenomenological tradition. His demonstration of the merits of the resultant phenomenological approach for environmental philosophy, however, is convincingly executed, and it is all the more impressive for the elegance, clarity and occasional humour of his writing. Readers with little background in phe- nomenology will appreciate not only the care James has taken in order to introduce phenomenological concepts with a minimum of linguistic complexity, but also his wry asides regarding traditional phenomenological terminology. Those seeking an engaging Book Reviews 99 © Society for Applied Philosophy, 2011