To call these unsettling times is an understatement: our political leaders are less and less respectable; in the realm of business, cheating, lying, and stealing are hazily defined; and in daily life, rapidly changing technology offers permission to act in ways inconceivable without it. Yet somehow, this hasn’t quite led to a complete free-for-all—people still draw lines around what is acceptable and what is not. In her new book "Behaving Badly: The New Morality in Politics, Sex, and Business," Eden Collinsworth sets out to understand how and why. In her quest, she seeks out, among others, a prime minister, the editor of the Financial Times, a holocaust survivor, a pop star, and a former commander of the U.S. Air Force and grapples with the impracticality of applying morals to foreign policy; precisely when morality gets lost in the making of money; what happens to morality without free will; whether “immoral” women are just those having a better time; why celebrities have become the new moral standard-bearers; and if testosterone is morality’s enemy or its hero.
Eden Collinsworth is a former media executive and business consultant. She was president of Arbor House Publishing Co. and founder of the Los Angeles-based monthly lifestyle magazine, BUZZ, before becoming a vice president at Hearst Corporation. She served as the chief operating officer and chief-of-staff at the EastWest Institute, a global think tank. After writing a bestselling book in China for Chinese businessmen on Western deportment, she launched Collinsworth & Associates, a Beijing-based consulting company, which specialized in intercultural communication. She is the author of a novel, It Might Have Been What He Said, the movie rights of which have been optioned by Wendy Finerman; of a memoir, I Stand Corrected: How Teaching Manners in China Became Its Own Unforgettable Lesson; and of Behaving Badly: The New Morality in Politics, Sex, and Business. She currently lives in London.
