MacIntyre (philosophy, U. of Notre Dame) has reconsidered and extended his ideas since the 1981 and 1984 editions, but retains his central thesis that it is only possible to understand the dominant moral culture of advanced modernity adequately from a standpoint external to that culture. He is still an Aristotelian, he says, but has come to believe that Thomas Aquinas expressed Aristotle's views better than the old man himself did. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)